
Class S / £ ^3 



FACTS AND COMMENTS 



Facts and Comments 



BY 

HERBERT SPENCER 




NEW Y ORK 
D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 

1902 






Copyright, 1902 
By D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 






Published Mat,, 1902 



c *\«!*.« ^"•••' *. ; 



W . L , 'Skoe^akor 



PREFACE. 



Duking the years spent in writing various sys- 
tematic works, there have from time to time arisen 
ideas not fitted for incorporation in them. Many of 
these have found places in articles published in re- 
views, and are now collected together in the three 
volumes of my essays. But there remain a number 
which have not yet found expression: some of them 
relatively trivial, some of more interest, and some 
which I think are important. 

I have felt reluctant to let these pass unrecorded, 
and hence during the last two years, at intervals now 
long and now short, have set them down in the fol- 
lowing pages. Possibly to a second edition I shall 
make some small additions, but, be this as it may, the 
volume herewith issued I can say with certainty will 

be mv last. 

H. S. 

Brighton, March, 1902. 



CONTENTS. 



PAGE 

A Business Principle . ' 1 

Some Regrets 6 

A Problem 12 

A Few Americanisms 16 

Presence of Mind 19 

The Corruption op Music 26 

Spontaneous Reform 29 

Feeling versus Intellect 35 

• The Purpose of Art 44 

Some Questions . . .49 

The Origin of Music 52 

Developed Music 61 

Estimates of Men 79 

State Education 82 

The Closing Hours 94 

• Style 97 

• Style Continued ,. . . . 106 

Meyerbeer . 112 

The Pursuit of Prettiness 116 

Patriotism 122 

Some Light on Use-Inheritance 128 

Party Government 135 

Exaggerations and Mis-statements 145 

Imperialism and Slavery 157 

vii 



Vlll CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Re-barbarization e .172 

Regimentation 189 

Weather Forecasts 201 

The Regressive Multiplication of Causes . . . 210 

Sanitation in Theory and Practice 216 

Gymnastics 225 

Euthanasia 231 

The Reform of Company-Law 234 

Some Musical Heresies 245 

Distinguished Dissenters 258 

Barbaric Art 265 

Vaccination 270 

Perverted History , . . 274 

Grammar 280 

What should the Sceptic say to Believers? . . . 292 

Ultimate Questions'? 300 

Appendix — Some Experiences of Criticism . . . 305 



FACTS AND COMMENTS, 



A BTJSESTESS-PKINCIPLE. 

Among the many cases of malpractices by solicit- 
ors recently brought to light, one is especially strik- 
ing as seeming at variance with all probability. To 
suppose that a solicitor who has been President of 
The Incorporated Law Society and also chairman of 
its Disciplinary Committee could be guilty of divert- 
ing to his own use large sums belonging to clients, 
seems contrary to common sense. " Surely here is 
a man who may be implicitly trusted/' would be the 
remark made to any one who doubted the wisdom 
of giving him unchecked administrative power. As 
we see, however, the scepticism would have been 
justified. 

Not unfrequently I have been astonished at the 
confidence with which men deliver their securities 
and the control of important transactions to their 
legal agents. " Everybody does it," each thinks to 
himself, " and I suppose I may safely do it." This 
unlimited trust seems the more remarkable after 
considering the utter absence of trust shown by the 

1 



2 A BUSINESS-PRINCIPLE. 

various deeds and documents left in a lawyer's hands. 
Each of these amounts to an elaborate profession of 
distrust in those with whom business-transactions 
have been, or are, or will be, carried on. Clauses 
are inserted to shut out all possibilities of evasion or 
perversion, and the whole is so witnessed as to insure 
that the specified claims and liabilities can be legally 
proved. Yet all these precautions having been 
taken, the security supposed to be gained is aban- 
doned. Everything is placed in the legal agent's 
hands, trusting that he will act honestly; and this 
notwithstanding the fact that the repute alike of 
law and of lawyers is not of the highest! Surely a 
surprising inconsistency! 

Many years ago, when on the managing commit- 
tee of a club, I disgusted the secretary by remarking 
that in matters of administration, as in matters of 
business at large, the maxim should be: — Do not 
suppose things are going right till it is proved they 
are going wrong, but rather suppose they are going 
wrong till it is proved they are going right. This 
was a hard saying for an official to hear; but I hold 
it to be a saying worthy of recognition by those who 
are concerned with affairs, private or public. While 
ignoring this rule of conduct in the many cases 
where it is most important to follow it, the mass of 
people follow it tacitly, if not avowedly, in respect 
of ordinary transactions. What is the meaning of 



A BUSINESS-PRINCIPLE. 3 

taking a receipt, if not an implied belief in the need 
for excluding the possibility of going wrong? What 
are the detailed specifications of every contract and 
the naming of penalties in case of non-performance? 
What is the requiring of security when engaging an 
employe? Or what are the many clauses in an Act 
of Parliament which are inserted to prevent evasion? 
These are all recognitions of the truth that things 
will go wrong unless they are made to go right. And 
has not every one daily proof of this in the briberies 
of servants by tradesmen, the illicit commissions of 
agents, the favouritism shown to certain Government 
contractors, the purchasing of titled names to 
strengthen the directing boards of new schemes? 
Yet in certain spheres confidence continues undimin- 
ished and scepticism is reprobated. See for example 
the history of bank-failures, repeated generation 
after generation, nearly all resulting from this habit 
of supposing that things are going right because it 
has not been shown that they are going wrong. 
Though managers who have embezzled, directors 
who have drawn on the funds of the bank for their 
own uses, and boards who have launched into wild 
speculations, have time after time shown the proprie- 
taries the need for such measures as shall bring to 
light misdoings before they have reached great pro- 
portions, no safeguards are sought. Almost incredi- 
ble is the way in which auditors are usually ap- 



4 A BUSINESS-PRINCIPLE. 

pointed to banking companies and to companies at 
large. Manifestly the institution of an audit was 
suggested by the experience that managers or man- 
aging bodies could not be implicitly trusted to make 
exact statements of the finances, but needed check- 
ing by an independent person. The need having 
been recognized, one might have supposed that care 
would be taken that the check should continue effi- 
cient. But we see no care taken. Year after year 
reports of company-meetings state that auditors re- 
tire but are eligible for re-election, and they are 
forthwith re-elected; so that if there should be any- 
thing wrong in their own doings, or in their rela- 
tions with the managing body, there is no likelihood 
of disclosure. The truth that for a system of au- 
dit to be efficient the auditors should be frequently 
changed, passes unregarded. Doubtless inconve- 
nience will be alleged as a reason for not changing; 
but inconvenience attends every safeguard. You can- 
not be insured against fire or accident for nothing; 
and you cannot be insured against dishonesty without 
paying. 

While taught, and professing to believe, that the 
human heart is deceitful above all things and desper- 
ately wicked, men in cases like these tacitly assume 
that the human heart is not at all wicked and is quite 
trustworthy. The rational belief lies between these 
extremes. It should ever be borne in mind that with 



A BUSINESS-PRINCIPLE. 5 

a type of human nature such as now exists, going 
wrong is certain to occur in course of time if there 
are left any openings for going wrong, and that the 
only prudent course is to be ever seeking out the 
openings and stopping them up. 



SOME REGRETS. 

In a paragraph quoted with applause from Mr. 
Ruskin, I met the statement that " all other efforts in 
education are futile till you have taught your people 
to love fields, birds, and flowers." Merely noting 
that in the absence of a predisposition no amount of 
teaching will produce such a love, I make the obvious 
remark that life as a whole is not to be included in 
a love of Nature; and I point the remark by asking 
what must be thought of Dr. Johnson? Almost de- 
void though he was of the sense of natural beauty, 
few will dare to contend that his education was futile. 
But we have in this assertion one of those multi- 
tudinous random exaggerations characterizing Mr. 
Ruskin' s writings. 

In reasonable measure the sentiment he expresses 
is shared in by most people, and by me is shared in 
very largely. Often when among the Scotch moun- 
tains I have pleased myself with the thought that 
their sides can never be brought under the plough: 
here at least Nature must ever remain unsubdued. 
Though subordination to human wants is sometimes 
suggested by the faint tinklings of distant sheep- 



SOME REGRETS. 7 

bells, or by some deer on the sky-line, yet these do not 
deduct from, but rather add to, the poetry of the 
scene. In such places one may forget for a while the 
prosaic aspects of civilization. 

I detest that conception of social progress which 
presents as its aim, increase of population, growth of 
wealth, spread of commerce. In the politico-eco- 
nomic ideal of human existence there is contemplated 
quantity only and not quality. Instead of an im- 
mense amount of life of low type I would far sooner 
see half the amount of life of a high type. A pros- 
perity which is exhibited in Board-of-Trade tables 
year by year increasing their totals, is to a large ex- 
tent not a prosperity but an adversity. Increase in 
the swarms of people whose existence is subordinated 
to material development is rather to be lamented than 
to be rejoiced over. We assume that our form of 
social life under which, speaking generally, men toil 
to-day that they may gain the means of toiling to- 
morrow, is a satisfactory form, and profess ourselves 
anxious to spread it all over the world; while we 
speak with reprobation of the relatively easy and con- 
tented lives passed by many of the peoples we call 
uncivilized. But the ideal we cherish is a transitory 
one — appropriate, perhaps, to a phase of human de- 
velopment during which the passing generations are 
sacrificed in the process of making easier the lives of 
future generations. Intrinsically, a state in which 



8 SOME REGRETS. 

our advance is measured by spread of manufactures 
and a concomitant production of such regions as the 
" Black Country/' looking as though it had lately 
been invaded by an army of chimney-sweeps, is a 
state to be emerged from as quickly as may be. It 
is a state which in sundry respects compares ill with 
the past, and is far from that which we may hope 
will be attained in the future. 

One of its evil results is the threatened sub- 
mergence of those still-remaining traces of a life 
which, though ruder and simpler, left men some 
leisure in which to live. 

This over-running of the old by the new strikes 
me afresh with every summer's sojourn in the coun- 
try, and deepens my regret. An American lady, after 
staying for some time in England, expressed to me 
the opinion that a country without ruined castles and 
abbeys is not worth living in. I fully understood her 
feeling and to a considerable extent sympathized with 
her. Though intensely modern and having but small 
respect for ancient ideas and institutions, I have 
great pleasure in contemplating the remains be- 
queathed by the times that are gone. Not that the 
interest is in any degree an historical one. A guide 
who begins his daily repeated series of facts or fic- 
tions about the ancient place he is showing me over, 
quickly has his story cut short. I do not care to be 
distracted by it from the impression of antiquity and 



SOME REGRETS. 9 

from enjoyment of the half -hidden beauties of the old 
walls and arches made more picturesque by decay. 
And so is it with the old rural life that is rapidly 
passing away as towns and town-habits and town- 
ideas invade the country. 

As in numerous parts of the Earth appropriated 
by us the native races are being " improved " out of 
existence, so at home the progress of " improvement " 
is yearly leaving less and less of the things which 
made the country attractive. Under the western end 
of the South Downs, where I have taken up my abode 
this season, daily drives show me beauties future gen- 
erations will not see. The vast hedges overrun with 
clematis, and bryony, and wild hop, occupying as 
they do great breadths and casting wide shadows, are 
not tolerated by the advanced agriculturist. It is the 
same with the broad strips of greensward and wild 
flowers bordering the by-roads, no less than with the 
tortuous lanes, such as those around Woolbeding and 
Iping, where the track, deep down below the surface, 
is over-arched by foliage here and there pierced by 
sun-gleams. All of them seem fated to go, and to 
leave only post-and-rail or wire fences, or dwarf, 
closely-cropped hedges. The cottage roofs of thatch 
are being everywhere replaced by slate or tile roofs; 
and there is a gradual disappearance of half-wooden 
houses. Another trait of the country, familiar in my 
early days, is disappearing. Where a brook crossed 
2 



10 SOME REGRETS. 

the road, a couple of planks and a handrail served to 
carry over pedestrians, while horses, carts, and car- 
riages had to go through the water : an inconvenience 
only in times of flood. But now County Councils 
with members severally anxious to gain popularity 
by proposing something which " gives work," will 
soon replace all these by brick or stone bridges. Only 
here and there, where a path through the fields is car- 
ried over a small stream by a foot-bridge, will it still 
be possible to lean over the handrail and watch the 
minnows as they slowly come out of their hiding- 
places into which your shadow had frightened them. 

Various usages, too, which as seen in recollection 
are picturesque, are disappearing. Nowadays it is a 
rare thing to find gleaners; and in many parts of 
the country the gathering of mushrooms is forbid- 
den. No longer when passing a barn on a winter's 
day may one hear the alternating thuds of the flails, 
and no longer may one be awakened on a bright morn- 
ing in June by the sharpening of scythes — a sound 
so disagreeable in itself but made so delightful by its 
associations. 

While in some respects we may envy posterity, we 
may in one respect pity them. This disappearance 
of remnants and traces of earlier forms of life, intrin- 
sically picturesque as well as picturesque by associa- 
tion, will deprive them of much poetry which now 
relieves the prose of life. Everywhere it is the same. 



SOME REGRETS. 11 

Egypt, made like Europe by railways, steamboats, 
and hotels scattered along the Mle, will soon cease 
to excite the feelings proper to its antiquity. Mod- 
ernized Eome is losing all likeness to Kome as it was 
even fifty years ago. And here around us the ro- 
mance of the past is being extinguished by the dull 
realities of the present. Of course we shall bequeath 
many remains of existing civilization ; but it may well 
be doubted whether they will be as interesting as 
those which old times have bequeathed to us. 



A PEOBLEM. 

People devoid of musical perceptions have some 
compensations: one of them being that they are not 
persecuted by tunes which have obtained lodgments 
in consciousness and cannot for a time be expelled. 
Most if not all who have ordinarily good ears are 
liable to be annoyed by these invading melodies — 
often those vulgar ones originating in music-halls and 
everywhere repeated by street-pianos. One remedy 
for the evil, which is temporarily if not permanently 
efficient, is that of voluntarily taking up in thought 
some other melody: the result being that as con- 
sciousness will not contain both, the original intruder 
is for a time extruded. There is some danger, how- 
ever, that the invited occupant will get possession in- 
stead. This, however, by the way. 

My reason for referring to this annoyance is that 
the associated facts throw a side-light on the dispute 
concerning the Ego. Metaphysical discussions often 
postulate the innate knowledge of a distinct, coherent, 
ever-present personality. "With some it is an axiom 
that along with the consciousness of objective exist- 
ence there is indissolubly joined the consciousness of 
12 



A PROBLEM. 13 

subjective existence — the idea of Self is inseparable 
from the idea of not-Self. This dogma appears at 
first sight unassailable. But when the consciousness 
of Self is critically examined, difficulties present 
themselves ; and, among them, difficulties of the class 
I have just exemplified. For it is not always possible 
to say of certain portions of consciousness whether 
they are to be included in the Ego or not. In the in- 
stance named the reason for doubt is conspicuous; 
and it is especially conspicuous when, as in my own 
case and in the cases of others I have cross-ques- 
tioned, the intruding melody persists during sleep. 
Repeatedly I have observed on awaking that it was 
the first thing of which I was conscious. What then 
is the mode of existence of this organized set of tones, 
so coherent that when partly repeated it insists on 
completing itself, and then after an instant recom- 
mences? In what way does this rebellious portion of 
consciousness stand related to the rest? "We can hard- 
ly include it in what we call the Ego, seeing that the 
Ego continually tries to repress it and fails. And 
yet if it is not a part of the Ego, what is it ? 

There are numerous facts of kindred nature. 
When I look at my hand the impression received un- 
questionably forms part of my consciousness — 
whether to be considered as a passing phase of the 
Ego itself, or as an effect wrought on it, is a question 
we may leave undiscussed. But now near the margin 



14 A PROBLEM. 

of the large visual area which takes in multitudinous 
objects in the room, there is on the one side a vague 
impression of the fireplace, of which I may or may 
not think, and on the other side, of the window, the 
idea of which as a window may or may not enter my 
mind. There is also an outermost fringe of the visual 
area from which there come to me impressions that 
are meaningless unless I turn my eyes towards their 
source: even if I think of them I cannot, without 
moving, tell their natures. In what relations, then, 
do these various indefinite impressions stand to the 
Ego ? I cannot even say that they form parts of con- 
sciousness in the ordinary sense, since, while observ- 
ing things immediately before me, I am scarcely 
aware that these remote ones are there, though they 
are unquestionably included in the aggregate filling 
my mental field. Still less can I say how these vague 
outliers stand related to that part of consciousness 
which I regard as my mental Self. Like questions 
may be raised respecting the desires and emotions, 
faint or strong, which often continue to intrude spite 
of endeavours to keep them out; and which thus 
seem to be modes of consciousness in antagonism with 
the consciousness thought of as constituting the Ego. 
But the most distinct and striking example of this 
detached antagonistic portion of consciousness is that 
with which I set out — the invading melody. For its 
tones form an organized and integrated cluster of 



A PROBLEM. 15 

states of consciousness quite independent of such part 
of consciousness as I call myself, and which is in con- 
flict with it and continually triumphs over it. 

Erom the physio-psychological point of view the 
interpretation of this phenomenon is not difficult ; but 
how the pure metaphysician is to solve it I cannot see. 



A FEW AMEKICANISMS. 

When to protest against new words or new uses 
of old words, and when to accept them, is not easy 
to decide. If purists had ruled from the beginning, 
language would never have progressed. Without 
hesitation, however, we may condemn perversions of 
words, and may frown on the pedantry which adopts 
long words where short ones would be as good or 
better. 

Some misapplications of words that are common 
in America have often vexed me — one especially, the 
use of the word " claim " instead of " say " or " as- 
sert " or " affirm " or " allege "; e. g.—" I claim that 
he knew all about it before he laid the bet." This 
abuse has of late, I am sorry to say, made its appear- 
ance in English journals of repute, even in The Times. 
A monthly magazine furnishes me with a double ex- 
ample. An English critic and the American writer 
he criticizes, both pervert the word in the space of 
three sentences. Speaking of the Cubans the one 
says: — " The claim that they are not capable of gov- 
erning themselves has not been established in the 
writer's experience"; and the other says: — "It is 
not intended in this description of affairs to claim 
16 



A FEW AMERICANISMS. 17 

that the Cubans are without faults." This misuse is 
inexcusable because there are sundry words serving 
rightly to express the intended meaning, while the 
word employed does not express it. A thing claimed 
is a thing which may be possessed; but one who 
claims that A behaved better than B, implies posses- 
sion in no sense either actual or potential. 

Business men in America often commit another 
linguistic outrage — not indeed of the same kind but 
of a kind to be strongly reprobated. Here are exam- 
ples. " The company have leased the new line and 
will operate it." " The cost of operating the factory 
has been so-and-so." Everywhere these words replace 
the words " work " and " working " — words which, 
though open to objection, have not the vice of mere 
pedantry. And now this abuse, too, is creeping in 
here. T have just met with the sentence: — " Auto- 
matic couplers can be operated with ease." 

A corruption no less reprehensible, common in 
American speech, is the use of " on " in place of 
" in " : — " I met him on Broadway " ; "I found him 
on the cars." Here we have a deliberate abolition 
of a convenient distinction which in good English 
is uniformly observed. The word " in " implies in- 
closure more or less decided — " in a box," " in a car- 
riage." The word " on " negatives inclosure — im- 
plies that the object is not shut up, and, further, that 
there are no restraining boundaries near it. The dis- 



18 A FEW AMERICANISMS. 

tinction is marked with precision in two such phrases 
as — " in a field " and " on a common ": the circum- 
stances being in all respects alike save in the presence 
of inclosing fences in the one case and their absence 
in the other case. The disuse of this convenient dis- 
tinction is a retrograde step, for development of lan- 
guage, as of thought, is a progress in establishing dis- 
criminations — a making of existing words more precise 
and introducing others to mark further differences. 

Men ought to regard their language as an in- 
lieritance to be conserved, and improved so far as that 
3 possible, and ought not to degrade it by reversion 
o lower types. It should be a matter of conscience 
aot to misuse words; it should also be a matter of 
conscience to resist misuse of them. Especially 
should our own language be thus guarded. If, as 
several unbiassed foreign judges hold, the English 
language will be, and ought to be, the universal lan- 
guage, it becomes the more a duty to mankind to 
check bad habits of speech. 

Perhaps a little might be done if in return for 
criticisms on Americanisms like those above passed, 
Americans were systematically to expose deteriora- 
tions in the language as spoken here. They might, 
for example, mercilessly ridicule that vulgar misuse 
of the word " awfully " which has now continued for 
more than a generation. There is plenty of scope for 
denouncing of kindred perversions. 



PRESENCE OF MIND. 

While most faculties admit of increase by edu- 
cation, there are some universally recognized as in- 
nate, and but little capable of change. We may in- 
clude Presence of Mind among these. Still, by cer- 
tain disciplines a great faculty of this kind may be 
made greater and a small one may be to some degree 
augmented. 

A generation ago the autobiography of a well- 
known conjurer or prestidigitateur — it may have been 
Houdin — contained an instructive passage, quoted in 
a review which I saw. It was to the effect that some- 
times the autobiographer and his son, when going 
along a street, competed with one another in naming 
all the objects they saw in a shop-window while pass- 
ing it — an intentional exercise of the ability to per- 
ceive many things at a glance. A high degree of 
such an ability was obviously needful for one who 
deluded others by his sleight-of-hand tricks. Might 
not the power of rapid and complete observation be 
increased in children by devices nearly akin to games? 
Suppose a blackboard in front of which can be drawn 
at a variable speed a black linen screen, containing a 

19 



20 PRESENCE OF MIND. 

square opening through which marks on the board are 
visible for a moment while the opening passes them. 
The teacher might begin with, say, three conspicuous 
spots irregularly placed on the board while standing 
with his back to the class so as to hide them. Then, 
having drawn the opaque part of the screen across 
them, he, when his pupils are ready, lets a spring pull 
back the screen so that these spots become visible, 
say for a second or two seconds; and the pupils there- 
upon place dots on their slates as nearly as they can 
in like relative positions: comparisons presently 
showing which has approached nearest to the original. 
The relative positions of the spots may of course be 
varied in any way, and their number may be increased 
one at a time, to four, five, six. Three lines may 
next be taken, unlike in their lengths, directions, and 
relative positions, and analogous complications may 
follow. Thence the transition may be to figures: say 
a triangle, a circle, and a straight line, variously 
placed with regard to one another; and so on 
through higher combinations: the length of the ex- 
posure being decreased as the power of rapid percep- 
tion becomes greater. More useful, however, because 
more interesting, are exercises of this nature yielded 
by indoor games — some of those played by children 
and some of those played by young people. There 
are card-games success in which depends on quickly 
seeing the right place for disposal of a card: all eyes 



PRESENCE OF MIND. 21 

being turned on each player in turn to detect instant- 
ly any error of distribution. Of course while such 
lessons and games increase the observational powers 
of all, they leave to the last great differences among 
them. These are entailed by the physiological limit 
implied by what astronomers and others call " the 
personal equation." Between the instant when a cer- 
tain thing is seen and the making of a mark or signal, 
there is an interval which is greater in one person 
than in another: the cause being that the speed of 
the nervous discharge varies. Of course the number 
of things observable at once is governed by this. It 
should be added that apart from the advantage gained 
by greater quickness of perception there is the more 
general advantage of raised intensity of attention. 
On the ability to concentrate the intellectual powers 
upon anything before them, success of many kinds 
depends. 

But now supposing presence of mind is to some 
extent made greater by increasing the ability to see 
instantly all the circumstances of a case, there re- 
mains to be increased the equally important factor — 
fertility of resource. Here little can be done. Pos- 
sibly by questions asked a propos of an imagined dis- 
aster, to be answered in, say, five seconds, some ex- 
ercise might be given to the appropriate powers of 
thought which ordinarily are never exercised. A 
lady has set her dress on fire: — what would you do? 



22 PRESENCE OF MIND. 

" Run for water," would be one answer. " Fetch a 
blanket and wrap it round her," might be another. 
" Tear down the window curtain if it is woollen, and 
roll her in it," might be a third. And perhaps a 
fourth would be — " Pull her down backwards and 
put the hearth-rug over her." Again, suppose a run- 
away horse, no longer controllable by the driver: — 
what shall be done? " Jump out," will in some cases 
be suggested. Another might say — " If the road is 
not full of vehicles let the horse gallop till he is 
tired." And a third answer may be — " Lie down in 
the bottom of the carriage." Once more imagine 
you are endeavouring to save a man who is drown- 
ing: — how will you proceed? One reply is — " Give 
him a hand and swim with the free arm." Another 
may say — " Seize him by the collar and use the other 
arm for swimming." And a third suggestion will be 
— " Get behind his back to avoid grappling and push 
him before you as you swim." In each case the sub- 
sequent conversation would disclose reasons wdiy 
some methods were bad, others better, and another 
the best. Naturally the incidents of life furnish 
numerous kindred problems, and the ability quickly 
to hit on the best course to be followed may to some 
slight extent be augmented. At the same time re- 
peated exercises of this kind will stock the memory 
with ways of proceeding which may serve when ac- 
tual accidents occur. 



PRESENCE OF MIND. 23 

But as there is a constitutional limit to acquire- 
ment of quickness of observation, so there is a con- 
stitutional limit to acquirement of that resourceful 
faculty needed to meet emergencies. The normal 
working of an animal organism, human or other, im- 
plies that the part or parts called on to perform extra 
duty shall immediately be supplied with extra blood: 
a muscle at rest suddenly excited to action must 
forthwith have its arteries better filled, and the stom- 
ach after food has been taken must have its blood- 
vessels more fully charged than when it is doing noth- 
ing. So with the brain. To yield the quick and vivid 
thought and feeling required for coping with disaster, 
actual or impending, the cerebral circulation must be 
exalted, and by a well-toned vascular system this need 
is fulfilled. But here comes in a frequent interfer- 
ence. Fainting as a result of violent emotion is a 
common experience. We see in it one of those auto- 
matic arrangements for warding off organic disasters 
of which there are many. For violent emotion im- 
plies that parts of tjie brain have suddenly become 
surcharged with blood: a concomitant being that 
some of the over-distended arterioles are in danger 
of giving way under the pressure — a mischief which 
must be serious and may be fatal. Under these con- 
ditions there comes into play, through the action of 
the vagus-nerve, a sudden reining in of the heart: it 
ceases to act and the pressure on the blood-vessels, 



24 PRESENCE OF MIND. 

thereupon diminished, ceases to be dangerous. But 
now between the ordinary mental state accompany- 
ing the ordinary cerebral circulation, and this ex- 
treme state in which arrest of mental action results 
from arrest of cerebral circulation, there are all gra- 
dations; that is, there are all degrees in the reining in 
of the heart, short of absolute arrest. But from 
diminished heart-power it results that instead of the 
appropriate exaltation of mental force there is a 
greater or less decrease of it. The needful supply 
of blood to the whole of the brain being partially 
withheld, the faculties are partially thrown out of 
gear. The thoughts become confused and there is 
something like a temporary paralysis of intellect. Es- 
pecially does this happen in nervous subjects and 
those who, by over-stress, have permanently injured 
the vascular system and the nervous centres. In such 
this failure of blood-supply in presence of a dan- 
ger or catastrophe, physical or moral, produces some- 
thing like a mental chaos — a derangement of ideas 
and impulses such that everything goes wrong, and 
either nothing is done or something just opposite to 
that which should be done. 

Depending thus in chief measure on constitution, 
natural or modified by disorder, presence of mind can- 
not be much increased by culture. Still something 
may be done. Practice in rapidity of observation and 
fertility of resource must benefit all, whatever na- 



PRESENCE OF MIND. 25 

tures they may have ; and where emergencies are not 
of an alarming kind may increase the presence of 
mind even of the nervous. Though little is to be ex- 
pected it is well to attempt that little. Eemembering 
that occasionally presence of mind means salvation to 
self or others from evils that are serious, if not fatal, 
it will be inferred that discipline or exercise tending 
even in a small degree to make it greater, might fitly 
take the place of many worthless lessons which form 
large parts of current education. 



/ 



THE COKKUPTION OF MUSIC. 

Music-performers and teachers of music are cor- 
rupters of music. This is a paradox most people will 
think extremely absurd. I am about to justify it. 

Without going back for proof to past days, when 
from time to time a prima donna forced a composer 
to introduce passages enabling her to display her 
vocal agility, I will limit myself to the present. Jus- 
tifications meet me continually. Here, for instance, 
is an extract from a recent musical criticism, in 
which, after remarking that the sonata in question is 
not a good one, the writer goes on — 

" It is not difficult to understand the attraction which this 
work possesses for first-rate pianists ; there are difficulties in it 
to be conquered." 

And here is another : — 

" Miss 's vocal method is not beyond criticism, but as 

she succeeds in emitting sounds at a height not usually at- 
tained, the public is quite satisfied." 

Hamlet, in his address to the players, reprobated 
those who " split the ears of the groundlings who, 
for the most part, are capable of nothing but inex- 
plicable dumb shows and noise." Changing time, 
place, and terms, it may be said that three-fourths 
26 



THE CORRUPTION OF MUSIC. 27 

of musical audiences at the present day are in the 
same relative position. They appreciate but little the 
musical ideas and feelings of the composer, or the ef- 
fective rendering of them ; but an extraordinary feat 
of vocalization, or a display of marvellous gymnas- 
tics on the violin, brings a round of applause. And 
then, unhappily, as the members of the orchestra ap- 
plaud — applaud because they know how great are the 
difficulties overcome — the audience is encouraged in 
the belief that this is music, and clap lest they should 
be thought persons of no taste. In this way per- 
formers, desiring less to render faithfully the mean- 
ings of the pieces they play than to exhibit their pow- 
ers of execution, vitiate the music and the tastes of 
their hearers. Direct evidence has come to me from 
two lady-pianists, both of whom played at concerts 
pieces which they chose not because they were beau- 
tiful but because they were of kinds making it possi- 
ble to show brilliancy of performance: a toccata was 
the programme-name of one. The elder of these 
ladies, who was a teacher of music, admitted that she 
hoped to show parents what a good teacher she must 
be to be able to play in that style ! 

As is implied by these confessions, the mischief 
originates in the performer's pre-occupation with self, 
for this largely excludes occupation with the com- 
poser's thoughts. The dominant feeling is not love 
of the music rendered but desire for the applause 



28 THE CORRUPTION OF MUSIC. 

which brilliant rendering will bring. In the cases of 
celebrated performers to whom crowds of hearers 
flock, this is almost a necessity. Many years ago, 
when coming away from a concert given by a cele- 
brated Russian pianist, I remarked — " Too little 
music and too much Rubinstein." 

Nor is this all. There is a more widely diffused 
and less obtrusive mischief. A dominant trait of 
brilliant musical execution is rapidity. A Saltarello 
or a Tarantelle is easy enough, provided it be played 
slowly. The skill is shown in playing it with great 
speed; and teachers incite their pupils to achieve this 
great speed. The result is gradually to raise the 
standard of time, and the conception of what is the 
appropriate time is everywhere being changed in the 
direction of acceleration. This affects not pieces of 
display only but pieces of genuine music. So much 
is this the case that habitually when ladies have 
played to me I have had to check them — " Not so 
fast, not so fast ! " the rate chosen being usually such 
as to destroy the sentiment. 

In brief, this vitiation is one of the indirect re- 
sults of the aim on the part of professionals not to 
render most perfectly the ideas of the composer, but 
so to play as to increase their own earnings. 



SPONTANEOUS REFORM. 

Elsewhere I have illustrated the curious truth 
that while an evil is very great it attracts little or no 
attention; that when, from one or other cause, it is 
mitigated, recognition of it brings efforts to decrease 
it; and that when it has much diminished, there 
comes a demand that strong measures shall be taken 
for its extinction: natural means having done so 
much, a peremptory call for artificial means arises. 

One of the instances I named was the immense 
decline in drunkenness which has taken place since 
the 18th century, followed, during recent times, by a 
loud advocacy of legislation for suppressing it. The 
occasion for recalling this instance has been the dis- 
covery of some evidence showing how extreme were 
the excesses of our great-great-grandfathers. In one 
of a series of diocesan histories on the shelves of a 
country house, I found some extracts from the diary 
of a Thomas Turner, a mercer, &c. in a Sussex vil- 
lage. His entries show him to have been a reader of 
good literature and a religious man. The compiler 
says of him — 

"When he has not got too drunk on Saturday evenings he 
goes to church on Sunday. He always makes some criticism 

29 



30 SPONTANEOUS REFORM. 

on the sermon . . . Bad as he was, however, in regard to in- 
temperance, he does not seem to have been much worse than 
most of his neighbours. Whether they met for business or for 
pleasure " the ordinary result was that " the company broke up 
in a state of intoxication." 

Here are some of Mr. Turner's confessions: — 

"April 21, 1756. "Went to the audit, and came home 
drunk . . . Nov. 25. The curate of Laughton came to the 
shop . . . and also stayed in the afternoon till he got in liquor, 
and being so complaisant as to keep him company I was quite 
drunk. A party of 15 people, including the vicar of the parish, 
Mr. Porter, and his wife, meet at four in the afternoon. After 
supper . . . ' drinking all the time as fast as it could be well 
poured down.' About three o'clock in the morning he manages 
to get home ' without even tumbling. ' His wife is brought 
back two hours later." And then, at the instigation of Mrs. 
Porter, the vicar's wife, the carouse is resumed next morning. 
On Sunday "'we had as good a sermon as I ever heard Mr. 
Porter preach, it being against swearing. ' " Only a few 
days afterwards the same party of people met at Mr. Porter's. 
" ' We continued,' he says, ' drinking like horses, and singing 
till many of us were very drunk.' " 

One further extract shows in an instructive manner 
the social sanction, or something more, which these 
usages had. Making note of an invitation he has re- 
ceived, the diarist writes: — 

11 ' If I go I must drink just as they please, or otherwise I 
shall be called a poor, singular fellow. If I stay at home I 
shall be stigmatized with the name of being a poor, proud, ill- 
natured wretch.' ... So he resolves to go . . . ' Before I 
came away I think I may say there was not one sober person 
in the company.' " 

Another diarist, a Mr. Walter Gane, schoolmaster, 

makes similar confessions; and other details given 



SPONTANEOUS REFORM. 31 

show that throughout society at large this demorali- 
zation everywhere ran. Credibility is thus given to 
a passage contained in the Tour to the Hebrides, 
which, in the absence of this verifying evidence, 
would seem incredible. 

" Dr. Johnson observed that our drinking less than our 
ancestors was owing to the change from ale to wine. ' I re- 
member, ' said he, ' when all the decent people in Lichfield got 
drunk every night, and were not the worse thought of.' " 

Largely as we may discount this statement, we must 
conclude that the general inebriety was astoundingly 
great. 

What has produced the transformation which has 
since taken place? Not legislation, not stern repres- 
sion, not coercion. The improvement has slowly 
arisen, along with other social improvements, from 
natural causes. The vis medicatrix natures has been 
in operation. But this large fact and other large 
facts having like implications are ignored by our agi- 
tators. They cannot be made to recognize the pro- 
cess of evolution resulting from men's daily activities, 
though facts forced on them from morning till night 
show this in myriadfold ways. The houses they live 
in, their furniture, clothes, fuel, food — all are 
brought into existence by the spontaneous efforts of 
citizens supplying one another's wants. The pastures 
and cornfields they travel through, cover areas origi- 
nally moor and bog, which have been transformed by 
individual enterprise. The roads, the railways, the 



32 SPONTANEOUS REFORM. 

trains, the telegraphs, are products of combined ex- 
ertions prompted by desires for profit and mainte- 
nance. The villages and towns they pass exhibit the 
accretions due to private actions. The districts de- 
voted to one or other manufacture have been so de- 
voted by men who were simply seeking incomes to 
live upon. The enormous distributing organization 
with its vast warehouses and retail shops lining the 
streets, carrying everywhere innumerable kinds of 
commodities, has arisen without the planning of any- 
one. Market towns, large and small, have without 
forethought become places of periodic exchanges; 
while exchanges of higher and larger kinds have es- 
tablished themselves in London, where, from hour to 
hour, you may feel the pulse of the world. So, too, by 
spontaneous co-operation has grown up that immense 
mercantile marine, sailing and steaming, which takes 
men everywhere and brings goods from all places. 
And no less are we indebted to the united doings of 
private individuals for that network of submarine 
telegraphs by which there is now established some- 
thing like a universal consciousness. All these things 
are non-governmental. If we ask how arose the sci- 
ence which guided the development of them, we find 
its origin to have been non-governmental. If we ask 
whence came all the multitudinous implied inven- 
tions, the reply is that their origin, too, was non-gov- 
ernmental. Of the Press, daily, weekly, monthly, 



SPONTANEOUS REFORM. 33 

we still have to say it is non-governmental. It is so 
with the great torrent of books continually issuing, 
as well as with the arts — music, painting, sculpture, 
in their various developments — and with the amuse- 
ments, filling hours of relaxation. This vast social 
organization, the life of which we severally aid and 
which makes our lives possible by satisfying our 
wants, is just as much a naturally-developed product 
as is the language by which the wants are communi- 
cated. JSTo State-authority, no king or council, made 
the one any more than the other. The ridiculous 
Carlylean theory of the Great Man and his achieve- 
ments, absolutely ignores this genesis of social struc- 
tures and functions which has been going on through 
the ages. The deeds of the ruler who modifies the 
actions of his generation, it confounds with the 
evolution of the great body-politic itself, of which 
those actions are but incidents. It is as though a 
child, seeing for the first time a tree from which a 
gardener is here cutting off a branch and there pru- 
ning away smaller parts, should regard the gardener, 
the only visible agent, as the creator of the whole 
structure: knowing nothing about the agency of sun 
and rain, air and soil. Undeveloped intelligences can- 
not recognize the results of slow, silent, invisible 
causes. 

Education and culture as we now see them, do 
nothing to diminish this incapacity but tend rather to 



34 SPONTANEOUS REFORM. 

increase it. In so far as they are more than lin- 
guistic, the " Humanities/' to which the attention of 
the young is mainly given, are concerned with per- 
sonalities. After the traditional doings of gods and 
heroes, of great leaders and their conquests, come the 
products of the poets, of the historians, of the phi- 
losophers. And when study of earlier ages is supple- 
mented by study of later ages, we find the so-called 
history composed of kings' biographies, the narratives 
of their conflicts, the squabbles and intrigues of their 
vassals and dependents. In the consciousness of one 
who has passed through the curriculum universally 
prevailing until recently, there is no place for natural 
causation. Instead, there exists only the thought of 
what, in a relative sense, is artificial causation — the 
causation by appointed agencies and through force 
directed by this or that individual will. Small 
changes wrought by officials are clearly conceived, 
but there is no conception of those vast changes which 
have been wrought through the daily process of 
things undirected by authority. And thus the notion 
that a society is a manufacture and not an evolution, 
vitiates political thinking at large; leading, as in the 
case which has served me for a text, to the belief that 
only by coercion can benefits be achieved. Is an evil 
shown? then it must be suppressed by law. Is a good 
thing suggested? then let it be compassed by an Act 
of Parliament. 



FEELING VJEBSUS INTELLECT. 

In the early days of my friendship with Prof. 
Huxley — I think about 1854 — an afternoon call on 
him quickly brought the suggestion — " Come up- 
stairs; I want to show you something which will de- 
light you — a fact that goes slick through a great gen- 
eralization! " His ironical expression was prompted 
by his consciousness that being so much given to gen- 
eralizing I should be disconcerted. He was dissecting 
the brain of a porpoise, and the anomalous fact he 
pointed out was that the porpoise has a brain of rela- 
tively immense size — a size seemingly out of all rela- 
tion to the creature's needs. What can an animal 
leading so simple a life want with an organ almost 
large enough to carry on the life of a human being? 
Huxley (not then professor) had no solution of the 
difficulty to offer, and at the time there did not occur 
to me what I believe to be the solution. 

There has grown up universally an identification 
of mind with intelligence. Partly because the guid- 
ance of our actions by thought is so conspicuous, and 
partly because speech, which occupies so large a space 

in our lives, is a vehicle that makes thought pre- 

35 



36 FEELING VHHS US INTELLECT. 

dominant to ourselves and others, we are led to sup- 
pose that the thought-element of mind is its chief ele- 
ment: an element often excluding from recognition 
every other. Consequently, when it is said that the 
brain is the organ of the mind, it is assumed that the 
brain is chiefly if not wholly the organ of the intel- 
lect. 

The error is an enormous one. The chief com- 
ponent of mind is feeling. To see this it is necessary 
to get rid of the wrong connotations which the word 
mind has acquired, and to use instead its equivalent 
— consciousness. Mind properly interpreted is co-ex- 
tensive with consciousness : all parts of consciousness 
are parts of mind. Sensations and emotions are parts 
of consciousness, and so far from being its minor 
components they are its major components. In the 
first place the mass of consciousness at any moment 
consists of the sensations produced in us by things 
around — the various assemblages of colours im- 
pressed through our eyes, the sounds which salute 
our ears, the pressures on parts of our bodies as we 
lie, sit, or stand, the muscular strains accompanying 
our movements, and occasionally tastes and odours. 
Among these numerous peripheral feelings there is 
every instant an establishment of relations consti- 
tuting perceptions and thoughts — colours occupying 
certain areas and positions are recognized as such and 
such things by assimilation to ideal sets of colours 



FEELING VERSUS INTELLECT. 37 

similarly arranged, and from the movements of cer- 
tain groups of them particular results are foreseen: 
these foreseen results being ideal groups of feelings. 
And so with all the sounds, touches, odours, warmths : 
the intellectual element being limited to recognition 
of the co-existences and sequences among these. So 
that the tody even of our thought-consciousness con- 
sists of feelings, and only the form constitutes what 
we distinguish as intelligence: there is no intelli- 
gence in a sensation of red, or of sweetness, or of 
hardness, or of effort, but only in certain co-ordina- 
tions of such sensations. 

And then comes the other great class of feelings, 
ignored in the current conception of mind — the emo- 
tions. Of these, as of the sensations, it is observable 
that the ordinary ones present from moment to mo- 
ment are not regarded as feelings at all. Like respi- 
rations or winkings of the eyes, their unceasingness 
makes us oblivious of them. Yet every instant emo- 
tions are present. ~No movement is made but what 
is preceded by a prompting feeling as well as a 
prompting thought. And it needs only that the 
movement shall be large, or difficult, or resisted, to 
make us aware that an emotion of some kind was its 
antecedent. So is it with all the other feeble emo- 
tions. The day is fine, and there is a slight exalta- 
tion of mental state. It is rainy, and a comparative 
dulness results. Some one liked comes in, and a wave 



38 FEELING VERSUS INTELLECT. 

of agreeable consciousness arises; while an emotional 
cloud follows the sight of an enemy. Similarly with 
occupations. There is some task-work to be done, 
and behind all the bodily and mental activities need- 
ed, there lies a dim feeling of aversion — a feeling dif- 
fering greatly from that which accompanies the work- 
ing at a hobby or the achievement of a success. And 
then though the aggregate feeling ever passing is so 
unobtrusive that we hardly think of it as existing, 
it becomes, under exciting circumstances, almost the 
sole occupant of consciousness. If altercation rouses 
extreme anger, the emotion may become so great as 
even to exclude the power of speech: the thought- 
element is overwhelmed. Intense alarm may so 
throw the intellect out of gear as to produce tempo- 
rary inability to act. The anxiety bred of absorbing 
affection may extinguish all irrelevant ideas. And 
this mental element which thus upon occasion shows 
itself supreme, is in a sense supreme at all times; for 
the prevailing emotions, higher or lower, are those 
components of mind which determine the daily con- 
duct, now dutiful now lax, now noble now base. That 
part which we ordinarily ignore when speaking of 
mind is its essential part. The emotions are the mas- 
ters, the intellect is the servant. The guidance of our 
acts through perception and reason has for its end 
the satisfaction of feelings, which at once prompt the 
acts and yield the energy for performance of the acts; 



FEELING VERSUS INTELLECT. 39 

for all the exertions daily gone through, whether 
accompanied by agreeable or disagreeable feelings, 
are gone through that certain other feelings may be 
obtained or avoided. 

Here, then, is the solution of the anomaly named 
at the outset. The large brain of the porpoise is not 
the agent of much intellectual activity, but it is the 
agent of much emotional activity, accompanying the 
pursuit and capture of prey. That enormous muscu- 
lar power exhibited by the creature — exhibited some- 
times in its superfluous gambols while keeping up 
with a swift vessel — is the expression of an enormous 
outflow of feeling; for without the correlative feel- 
ing there could not be the muscular contraction. It 
is in generating this great body of feeling and con- 
comitant energy, perpetually expended in the move- 
ments of the chase, that its brain is mainly occupied. 

The multiplication of effects, which is a universal 
trait in the cosmic process, is well illustrated by the 
way in which errors ramify and eventually influence 
multitudinous things they are seemingly unconcerned 
with. That I might indicate some perverted concep- 
tions arising from it, has been my purpose in pointing 
out this immense mistake commonly made in identi- 
fying mind with intellect. 

For in these days, when it is assumed that, as 
components of the human being, mind and body stand 



40 FEELING VERSUS INTELLECT. 

the one high above the other (if indeed we can say 
this in presence of athleticism, and the giving of 
greater honour to the stroke of a winning eight 
than to a senior wrangler) — in these days when 
theoretically if not practically the mental domi- 
nates over the physical, grave evil arises from leav- 
ing the more important part of the mental out of 
account. The over-valuation of intelligence neces- 
sarily has for its concomitant under-valuation of 
the emotional nature. Considered in respect of 
their fitness for life, individual and social, those in 
whom the altruistic sentiments predominate are far 
superior to those who, with powers of perception and 
reasoning of the highest kinds join anti-social feelings 
— unscrupulous egoism and disregard of fellow-men. 
The contrast between some uncivilized tribes well il- 
lustrates this truth. Among savages the Fijians 
were, when found, remarkable for their cleverness, 
and for an ability to think which the lower races 
rarely show; while at the same time cannibalism was 
rampant among them, slave-tribes were preserved for 
food, and it was an ambition to be a known murderer. 
On the other hand the peaceful Arafuras are not de- 
scribed as intelligent: some of their ideas imply the 
contrary. But living together as they do without 
antagonisms and with only nominal government, their 
feelings are such that one who, being young, was dis- 
appointed in his desire to be chief (a distinction main- 






FEELING VERSUS INTELLECT. 41 

ly implying responsibility for the welfare of poorer 
tribesmen) consoled himself by saying — " Well, I can 
still use my property in helping my fellows." When 
thus put in apposition, the superiority of the moral 
element to the intellectual element becomes conspicu- 
ous. So long as it will hold together, a society wicked 
in the extreme may be formed of men who in keen- 
ness of intellect rank with Mephistopheles; and, con- 
versely, though its members are stupid and unpro- 
gressive, a society may be full of happiness if its 
members are scrupulously regardful of one another's 
claims, and actively sympathetic. This proposition, 
though almost a truism, is little regarded. Full rec- 
ognition of its truth would make men honour, much 
more than they do, the unobtrusively good, and think 
less of those whose merit is intellectual ability. There 
would, for example, be none of the unceasing admira- 
tion for that transcendent criminal, Napoleon. 

An over-valuation of teaching is necessarily a 
concomitant of this erroneous interpretation of mind. 
Everywhere the cry is — Educate, educate, educate! 
Everywhere the belief is that by such culture as 
schools furnish, children, and therefore adults, can 
be moulded into the desired shapes. It is assumed 
that when men are taught what is right, they will do 
what is right — that a proposition intellectually ac- 
cepted will be morally operative. And yet this con- 
viction, contradicted by every-day experience, is at 



42 FEELING VERSUS INTELLECT. 

variance with an every-day axiom — the axiom that 
each faculty is strengthened by exercise of it — in- 
tellectual power by intellectual action, and moral 
power by moral action. The current notion is that 
these causes and effects can be transposed — that as- 
sent to an injunction will be followed by exercise of 
the correlative feeling. It is true that where the 
feeling is already active, or the capacity for it exists, 
some effect may result; but where the feeling is dor- 
mant or congenitally deficient, the injunction prac- 
tically does nothing: unless, indeed, it excites repug- 
nance, as sometimes happens. It seems, however, 
that this unlimited faith in teaching is not to be 
changed by facts. Though in presence of multitudi- 
nous schools, high and low, we have the rowdies and 
Hooligans, the savage disturbers of meetings, the 
adulterators of food, the givers of bribes and receiv- 
ers of corrupt commissions, the fraudulent solicitors, 
the bubble companies, yet the current belief contin- 
ues unweakened; and recently in America an outcry 
respecting the yearly increase of crime, was joined 
with an avowed determination not to draw any infer- 
ence adverse to their educational system. But the 
refusal to recognize the futility of mere instruction 
as a means to moralization, is most strikingly shown 
by ignoring the conspicuous fact that after two 
thousand years of Christian exhortations, uttered 
by a hundred thousand priests throughout Europe, 



FEELING VERSUS INTELLECT. 43 

pagan ideas and sentiments remain rampant, from 
emperors down to tramps. Principles admitted in 
theory are scorned in practice. Forgiveness is voted 
dishonourable. An insult must be wiped out by 
blood: the obligation being so peremptory that an 
officer is expelled the army for even daring to ques- 
tion it. And in international affairs the sacred duty 
of revenge, supreme with the savage, is supreme also 
with the so-called civilized. 

As implied above, this undue faith in teaching is 
mainly caused by the erroneous conception of mind. 
Were it fully understood that the emotions are the 
masters and the intellect the servant, it would be seen 
that little can be done by improving the servant while 
the masters remain unimproved. Improving the 
servant does but give the masters more power of 
achieving their ends. 



THE PUPPOSE OF APT. 

The educational mania, having for its catchwords 
" Enlightenment, Information, Instruction/' tends 
in all ways to emphasize this erroneous ^identification 
of mind with intellect; and consequently affects the 
estimates men make of various mental activities and 
mental products. Among other results it vitiates 
their conceptions of Art and the purpose of Art: 
using the word Art in the sense now generally accept- 
ed as comprehensive of all works of creative imagina- 
tion. In this sphere, as in other spheres, there is 
under-valuation of the emotional element in mind and 
over-valuation of the intellectual element. 

Merely alluding to the unended controversy con- 
cerning dramatic art, which has all along turned 
upon the question whether the stage-representations 
of life are or are not instructive, as though the pro- 
duction of pleasure were of no account, I may note 
that in poetry we may see this bringing to the front 
of thought instead of feeling: instance the dictum of 
Mr. Matthew Arnold that " it is by a large, free, and 
sound representation of things, that poetry, this high 
criticism of life, has truth of substance." Not the 
44 



THE PURPOSE OF ART. 45 

arousing of certain sentiments but the communica- 
tion of certain ideas is thus represented as the poet's 
office. 

With pictorial representation the like has hap- 
pened. Artists seek to magnify their office on the 
ground that art is useful for intellectual culture : that 
reason being the only one assigned. Years ago my 
attention was drawn to this mistaken conception by 
a disquisition with which Mr. Holman Hunt accom- 
panied an exhibited picture — " Christ in the Work- 
shop/' it may have been. The educational value of 
Art was the theme of his proem. By implication it 
appeared that it is not enough for a picture to gratify 
the aesthetic perceptions or raise a pleasurable emo- 
tion. It must teach something. The yielding of 
satisfaction to certain feelings is not regarded as an 
aim to be put in the foreground, but the primary aim 
must be instruction. Recently in a lecture delivered 
before the Ruskin Society of Birmingham by the edi- 
tor of The Studio, I found an expression of the same 
belief. The words used were : — " The mission of art 
is to elevate the intelligence and gratify its longings." 

And now the same thing is happening in respect 
of music. This, too, is to be regarded as an intellec- 
tual exercise. It is an appeal to mind; and mind be- 
ing conceived as intellect it is an appeal to intellect. 
A composer must write to express, not feelings but 
enlightening ideas, and the listener must seek out and 



46 THE PURPOSE OF ART. 

appreciate these ideas. The avowed theory of Wag- 
ner was that the purpose of music is to teach. He 
held certain conceptions of life and considered his 
operas as vehicles for those conceptions and as 
agents for propagating them. Some kindred belief 
is implied by a distinguished disciple over here, who 
repudiates the supposition that music is to be con- 
ceived simply as a source of pleasure. On another 
side we see a kindred idea. Musical critics often give 
applause to compositions as being " scientific " — as 
being meritorious not in respect of the emotions they 
arouse but as appealing to the cultured intelligence 
of the musician. 

As implied above, I hold these to be perverted 
beliefs, having their roots in the prevailing enormous 
error respecting the constitution of mind. In that 
part of life concerned with music, as in other parts 
of life, the intellect is the minister and the emotions 
the things ministered to. Doubtless certain amounts 
of intellectual perception, implying appropriate cul- 
ture, are needful for making possible the pleasurable 
feelings which music is capable of producing. These, 
however, are but means to an end, and it is a pro- 
found mistake to regard them as the end itself. An 
analogy will help us here. Before there can be sym- 
pathy there must have been gained some knowledge 
of the natural language of the emotions — what tones 
and changes of voice, what facial expressions, what 



THE PURPOSE OF ART. 4? 

movements of the body, signify certain states of 
mind. But the knowledge of this natural language 
does not constitute sympathy. There may be clear 
perception of the meanings of all these traits without 
any production of fellow-feeling. Similarly, then, 
with the distinction between the knowledge of mu- 
sical expression in its complex developments, and the 
experience of those emotions to which the musical 
expression is instrumental. Only in so far as its cul- 
tivated perceptions form a means to that excitement 
of the feelings which the composer intended to pro- 
duce, does the intellect properly play a part; and 
even then, in playing its indispensable part, it is apt 
to interfere unduly. Many years ago, in the days 
when I had free admission for two to the Royal Ital- 
ian Opera, and when, as mentioned in her Life, I fre- 
quently took George Eliot as my companion, I re- 
member once remarking to her how much the tend- 
ency to analyze the effects we were listening to de- 
ducted from the enjoyment of them: my remark call- 
ing forth full assent. Consciousness having at any 
moment but a limited capacity, it results that part 
of its area cannot be occupied in one way without de- 
creasing the area which can be occupied in another 
way. The antagonism between intellectual appre- 
ciation and emotional satisfaction, is essentially the 
same as one which lies at the root of our mental 
structure — the antagonism between sensation and 



48 THE PURPOSE OF ART. 

perception; and it runs up throughout the whole 
content of mind, rising to such partial conflicts be- 
tween thought and feeling as those which accompany 
critical judgments of music. 

When we come to the alleged higher meaning of 
music — to that instruction which a composer is as- 
sumed to utter and the listener to comprehend, we 
have yet a further interference with the true end. 
The intellectual element intrudes still more on the 
emotional element. In proportion as the listener, in- 
stead of being a passive recipient becomes an active 
interpreter, in that proportion does he lose the kind 
of consciousness which it is the purpose of the art to 
produce. If, like Mr. Ernest Newman, he thinks 
music good in proportion as it " adds something to 
our knowledge of life " and, while listening, seeks for 
such knowledge, he will lose that which the music 
should give him, and, as I believe, will get nothing 
instead. 

Any culture-effect which may rightly be recog- 
nized must be consequent on the excitement of the 
superior emotions. Music may appeal to crude and 
coarse feelings or to refined and noble ones; and in 
so far as it does the latter it awakens the higher na- 
ture and works an effect, though but a transitory 
effect, of a beneficial kind. But the primary pur- 
pose of music is neither instruction nor culture but 
pleasure; and this is an all-sufficient purpose. 



SOME QUESTIONS. 

Tethered by ill-health to the South of England 
I have, since 7 89, spent the greater part of the sum- 
mer of each year in a country house — mostly that of 
some gentleman-farmer whose family and surround- 
ings fulfilled the needful conditions: one being the 
presence of young people. Taking, in my daily 
drives, two ladies as companions, and being generally 
unable to bear continuous conversation, I put a check 
on this by asking one or other question not to be 
answered without thought. The practice thus origi- 
nated became established, and it has since been my 
habit to set problems, partly by way of gauging the 
knowledge of young people and partly by way of ex- 
ercising their reasoning powers. One of the sim- 
plest, which was sometimes answered, is — How hap- 
pens it that sheep, rabbits, and hares have their eyes 
on the sides of their heads, while cats and dogs have 
their eyes nearly in front? Of others, to which the 
replies are less obvious, and to most of which no an- 
swers have been forthcoming, here are a few. 

How is it possible for a lark, while soaring, to 
sing for several minutes without cessation? 

What is the reason that in hilly districts the roads 



50 SOME QUESTIONS. 

are deep down below the level of the fields, whereas 
in flat districts they are on a level with the fields? 

Throughout the country, especially in its less fre- 
quented parts, the bye-roads, and sometimes even 
the main roads, have strips of greensward several 
yards wide on either side of the part used for traffic. 
In what manner did these strips originate? 

Cows and horses drink in the same way that we 
do, whereas dogs and cats drink by lapping. Y^hence 
arises this difference of habit? 

Why does a duck waddle in walking? And what 
is the need for that trait of structure which causes the 
waddle ? 

How is it that a bull-dog is able to retain his hold 
for a longer period than other dogs ? 

Rookeries are nearly always close to human 
dwellings, usually of some size. Rooks seem to gain 
nothing from this proximity, but daily fly far away to 
their feeding-grounds. Moreover they persist in thus 
breeding in the trees around houses, though annually 
many of their young are shot as soon as they can fly. 
What circumstances have led to this establishment of 
a home apparently so unfit ? 

In rambles or drives throughout the country we 
see few blackbirds or thrushes in the open fields, but 
we see more as we approach houses, especially good 
houses, even in parts of the year when there are no 
temptations from the fruit gardens. Why is this? 



SOME QUESTIONS. 51 

In attempted answers to these questions, the 
noteworthy fact has been the undeveloped idea of 
causation implied. Not so much that the answers 
were wrong but that they betrayed no conception of a 
relevant cause, was the startling revelation. When, 
for instance, I was asked whether a soaring lark's 
ability to sing without break is due to the greater 
purity of the air high up, there was shown entire 
failure to conceive the physical actions necessitated 
by a lark's song. Then, again, there were suggested 
solutions which were utterly indefinite even if rele- 
vant. When as a reason why the drinking of cows 
and horses differs from that of dogs and cats, there 
came the inquiry — Is it because of some difference in 
the shapes of their throats? it was clear that had I 
said Yes, the answer would have been thought suffi- 
cient: no conception having been framed of the way 
in which the suggested difference might account for 
the unlikeness of habit. Evidently minds left in the 
implied states are seed-beds for superstitions. That 
it is unlucky to spill salt, and that the impending ill- 
luck may be excluded by throwing a pinch over the 
left shoulder, or that to see the new moon through 
glass is likely to be followed by some evil, are beliefs 
accepted without difficulty where there exist no ra- 
tional ideas of causation. The most absurd dogmas 
readily find lodgment where no knowledge has been 
acquired of the order of Nature. 



THE OEIGIK OF MUSIC. 

Fokty odd years ago I published an essay under 
the title — "The Origin and Function of Music." 
The doctrine contained in that essay has been vari- 
ously criticized, in most cases adversely, both here 
and abroad. One of the earliest of my critics was 
Mr. Edmund Gurney, whose reasons for dissent occu- 
pied some pages in his work on The Power of Sound, 
as well as an essay in The Fortnightly Review for 
July 1876. To his criticisms I replied in a Post- 
script some few years ago appended to the original 
essay (see Essays, Library edition, vol. ii, pp. 437- 
449). In this Postscript I also dealt with the opposed 
theory of Mr. Darwin, who ascribes human song, as 
he ascribes the songs of birds, to the incidents of 
courtship; and have there, I think, shown the un- 
tenability of his hypothesis. I propose here to deal 
with the hypotheses of several others. 

In Mind for July 1891, Dr. Wallaschek, while 

combating the view elaborated by me, enunciated the 

view that the essential element in music is rhythm 

He says: — 
52 



THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 53 

"It is a well-known fact, established by the observations 
of travellers and investigators, that the one essential feature in 
primitive music is rhythm, melody being a matter of acci- 
dent." 

This assertion may, I think, be disposed of in two 
ways. It is at variance both with the popular concep- 
tion and with the scientific conception. Observe the 
popular conception. 

Here is a sparrow — the too-familiar sparrow. It 
sits on the eaves and chirps with tolerable regularity. 
Especially if it be a young one calling for food, its 
chirps are regular in their intervals — that is, rhyth- 
mical. Here in the adjacent copse is heard a black- 
bird, uttering successions of notes entirely without 
rhythm. To which of these kinds of utterance do we 
apply the word " song " ? E"ot to that of the rhyth- 
mical sparrow but to that of the unrhythmical black- 
bird. And why do we call the utterance of the black- 
bird a song? Manifestly because it displays the most 
conspicuous trait of that which we call song in human 
beings : it is a varying combination of notes differing 
in pitch. That is to say, we deny the name " song " 
absolutely to the rhythmical sounds made by the spar- 
row, in which there is no combination of notes un- 
like one another, and we give it to the variously- 
combined sounds made by the blackbird, though 
these are entirely unrhythmical; and we apply the 
word " song " to these sounds because they remind 
us of human song. Unquestionably, then, in the 



54 THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 

popular conception rhythm is not the essential ele- 
ment in music. 

An illustration will best prepare the way for the 
disproof furnished by analysis. The Mammalia are 
animals which, as the name implies, are characterized 
by having mammae — the possession of mammae es- 
sentially characterizes a mammal. " ISTo," might say 
Dr. Wallaschek, " a mammal's essential character- 
istic is a vertebral column." In response the natural- 
ist would reply that birds, reptiles, and fishes have 
also vertebral columns, and that that cannot be the 
essential trait of a mammal which is a trait possessed 
by other groups of creatures as well: it must be a 
trait in which it differs from them. Turn now to the 
several art-products characterized by rhythm. There 
are the rhythmical movements constituting the dance. 
There are the rhythmically-arranged articulations 
forming verses. And there are the successive vocal 
sounds of different pitch which compose the chant, 
in which verses were originally uttered — sounds 
which may be emitted apart from the words. As 
these three rhythmical manifestations of feeling were 
at first simultaneous, rhythm cannot be considered 
the fundamental element of any one of them rather 
than of the other two. It belongs to the rhythmical 
movements and to the rhythmical speech, just as 
much as to the rhythmical tones. In course of time 
these manifestations of feeliug differentiated: each 



THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 55 

retaining its rhythm. And that which characterizes 
any one of the three must be that in which it is unlike 
the others, not that which it has in common with 
them. 

Thus Dr. WallascheFs hypothesis ignores entire- 
ly the current conception of music and ignores also 
the principles of scientific classification. 

Recently in a clever, and in most respects rational, 
work, entitled A Study of Wagner, Mr. Ernest New- 
man, with his own adverse arguments, joined those 
of others. He quoted approvingly the criticism of 
M. Combarieu: — 

"Mr. Spencer neglects or ignores everything that gives to 
the art he is studying its special and unique character ; he does 
not appear to have realized what a musical composition is." 
(p. 164.) 

Here we have a striking example of the way in which 
an hypothesis is made to appear untenable by repre- 
senting it as being something which it does not profess 
to be. I gave an account of the origin of music, and 
now I am blamed because my conception of the origin 
of music does not include a conception of music as 
fully developed ! If to someone who said that an oak 
comes from an acorn it were replied that he had mani- 
festly never seen an oak, since an acorn contains no 
trace of all its complexities of form and structure, 
the reply would not be thought a rational one ; but it 
would be quite as rational as this of M. Combarieu, 
who thinks I have not " realized what a musical com- 



56 THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 

position is " because my theory of the origin of music 
says nothing about the characteristics of an overture 
or a quartet. What is every process of evolution 
but the gradual assumption of traits which were not 
originally possessed? 

Some of Mr. Newman's own criticisms exhibit the 
same confusion between the origin of a thing and the 
thing which originates from it. He says: — 

"Mr. Spencer himself admits that his theory affords no 
explanation of the place of harmony in modern music, while 
many musical sestheticians have found it almost as unsatisfactory 
in respect to the origin of melody." (p. 163.) 

With equal reason the assertion that all mathematics 
begins with finger-counting might be rejected because, 
if so, no explanation is forthcoming of the differential 
calculus! Passing over this, however, let us note 
two startling corollaries from Mr. Newman's criti- 
cism. If a theory of the origin of music is untrue 
because it does not recognize harmony, then the music 
of all Oriental peoples is swept away as not being 
music, since harmony is absent from it. Nay more, 
early European music, as of the Greeks, consisted 
solely of single successions of notes constituting mel- 
ody, or, more strictly, recitative : harmony came into 
existence only in comparatively modern times. The 
invalidity of the objection is by these facts made 
conspicuous. History itself shows us that harmony, 
being a late development of music, could not possibly 
be recognized in an account of its origin. 



THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 57 

Other passages in Mr. Newman's criticism go far 
towards conceding that which he denies. He says 
that— 

"vocal music is, broadly speaking, intended to present the 
verbal sense in another and more intensive form : its function is 
to re-think the speech-utterance in music. It is evident that 
this is impossible where the words, having no emotional con- 
tent," &c. 

Surely this is an admission that there is a natural re- 
lation between emotions and musical cadences — an 
admission again made when denying the practicabil- 
ity of giving a musical form to " a purely intellectual 
utterance." * In another place, Mr. Newman goes 
still further towards accepting the view which he sets 
out to reject. He writes: — 

"Hardly more noticeable is the transition from excited 
speech to ordinary recitative ; the mind feels that it is still in 
the same atmosphere, though the breathing is a little quickened. 
But sing a song, or play an adagio upon the piano, and you 
will realize at once that you have got upon quite a different 
plane of psychology." (p. 163.) 

To most it will seem strange that along with the be- 
lief that there is a natural transition from excited 
speech tcT recitative there should go a denial that 

* Since this was written an amusing illustration has been 
furnished me by a collection of Handel's "Opera Songs.' - ' A 
song in the opera of Floridante commences thus : 

" Tis worth observing, 
Some must be serving, 
Seeing that we cannot all wear a crown." 
5 



58 THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 

there can be any such transition from recitative to 
song. 

An illustration will, I think, dispose of this al- 
leged difference in the " plane of psychology." Here 
is a fabric of simple silk. Here is another fabric, like 
in colour and quality but figured : the figure, though 
of the same silk as the ground, being clearly distin- 
guishable from it. Evidently it may be said that the 
transition from the simple silk to the figured silk, is 
a transition to something lying in a different plane of 
construction. Yet the two have a common origin. 
The Jacquard loom was developed from the ordinary 
loom, and retains its essential principles: the Jac- 
quard apparatus being superposed on the original 
apparatus. In like manner, then, such distinction as 
exists between recitative and melody is a distinction 
which may be recognized while asserting that the two 
have a common source: melody rising a step higher 
than recitative as recitative rises a step higher than 
excited speech. 

Elsewhere, as also in some of the above para- 
graphs, I have cited direct evidence of development; 
as instance the fact that the music of Eastern races 
is not only without harmony but has more the char- 
acter of recitative than of melody, and the fact that 
the chant of the Early Greek poet was a recitative 
with accompaniment in unison on his four-stringed 
lyre. But Sir Hubert Parry, who adopts the view 



THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 59 

I have here re-explained and defended, has in his 
chapter on " Folk-Music " exemplified the early 
stages of musical evolution, up from the howling 
chants of savages — Australians, Caribs, Polynesian 
cannibals, &c. — to the rude melodies of our own an- 
cestors. I do not see how any unbiassed reader, after 
examining the evidence placed by him in its natural 
order, can refuse assent to the conclusion drawn. 

The argument may be much strengthened by em- 
phasizing some of the essential points. One of these, 
of great significance, I take from an account of 
" Omaha Indian Music " by Miss Alice C. Fletcher, 
an official of the Ethnological Museum at Cambridge, 
Mass. After describing the difficulties she had in 
bringing their songs into such forms as we use, she 
says : — " I ceased to trouble about theories of scales, 
tones, rhythm, and melody "; and then she goes on to 
say that she found it difficult to write down the songs 
of these Indians because their intervals are so indefi- 
nite. Now this is just one of the traits to be expected 
if vocal music is developed out of emotional speech; 
since the intervals of speech, also, are indefinite. Its 
tones have no such sharp and fixed distinctions as 
those by which the notes of song are characterized. 
A higher stage of the transition is strikingly shown 
by the Japanese song or recitative " Sayanara " (in 
English, " Farewell ").* ISTo listener to this can I 

* From the Miyako-Dori, edited by Mr. Paul Bevan. 



60 THE ORIGIN OF MUSIC. 

think deny that it is simply an idealization of the 
vocal utterances which strong feeling of a relevant 
kind might naturally produce. And then if, after 
this, he listens to Schubert's " Adieu " he may recog- 
nize a further idealization of the appropriate musical 
phrases and cadences — a further development of the 
melodic form. 

Supposing that the above explanations and the 
above further evidences do not convince dissentients, 
there may be put to them the question — How then 
do you explain the origin of music? Were belief in 
the supernatural as dominant now as during past gen- 
erations, there would come the ready answer that 
men when created were endowed with a musical 
sense; to which, however, would come the reply that 
some races of men have no musical sense. But now 
that supernaturalism has been so largely deposed by 
naturalism, and now that the evolution even of hu- 
man faculties is by many admitted, there presents 
itself the question — From what has the musical facul- 
ty been evolved? "With the established doctrine that 
from simple vocal signs of ideas language has been 
developed, there must obviously go the doctrine that 
from similarly rude beginnings there has been a de- 
velopment of music; and if so there must be faced 
the question — What rude beginnings? Those who re- 
ject the answer here given are bound to give another. 
What can it be? 



DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

To dissipate utterly the supposition that the essay 
" On the Origin and Function of Music " was intend- 
ed to be a theory of music at large, it may be well to 
indicate the scope of such a theory: showing, by im- 
plication, how small a part of it is included in the 
essay named. But let me first re-state some of the 
leading propositions of that essay, and give some ad- 
ditional evidences. 

With the truth that music under all its forms is 
an expression of exalted feeling, must be joined the 
truth that the exalted feeling which most commonly 
manifests itself vocally, is one of joy. We see this 
among children especially. Hence through associa- 
tion it happens that there is a certain vague elation 
derived from the mere perception of music, even 
when distance renders its special nature indistinguish- 
able: a faint wave of pleasure arises from sympathy 
with the half-audible sounds expressive of excited 
emotion. And this undefined gratification which 
music at large produces, seems always to remain the 
background on which each piece of music imposes its 

61 



G2 DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

particular shape — the faint general feeling which 
each piece specializes and intensifies, now in this way, 
now in that. 

An associated universal fact must be named, be- 
cause, though conspicuous, its significance is not suffi- 
ciently appreciated. It is that the various musical 
expressions of feeling in songs and instrumental pieces 
have all the trait of rhythmical variation — ascents 
and descents — originally simple and becoming grad- 
ually complex. How much closer than we common- 
ly suppose is the resulting kinship among musical 
compositions, will be seen on comparing the following 
four diagrams, by which a graphic form is given to 
the successive ascents and descents and the lengths 
of successive notes. Of course the intervals between 
notes and the lengths of notes, are incommensurable 
quantities; and as, for convenience, the horizontal 
lines representing the lengths of notes have been 
made short in comparison with the vertical lines rep- 
resenting the lengths of intervals, a somewhat dis- 
torted impression is given. But this leaves unaffected 
the general likeness which runs throughout these sym- 
bolized songs, widely different as they are in their 
characters. For they represent respectively the 
" Marseillaise," Handel's " Largo," " Pur dicesti," 
and a hunting song, " Old Towler." 



DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

THE MARSEJLLAtSE 



63 




HANDEL'S LARCO 




PUR DICESTI 



1/1 



AAj-^j^^ 



OLD TOWLER 




Yocal sounds are produced by the strains of cer- 
tain muscles, and we see how in each case these strains 
alternate between extremes, and how the major al- 
ternations are broken by minor alternations. More- 
over there is suggested the analogy between these 
alternating muscular strains and those by which 
dancing is produced: the two having a common ori- 
gin in the discharge of feeling into action. 



64 DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

On turning now to the more special aspects of 
music, we have first to note that it has two funda- 
mentally distinct elements — sensational and relation- 
al. Its effects are divisible into those arising from 
tones themselves and those arising from combina- 
tions among tones, successive and simultaneous. 
There needs no proof that both the beauty of music 
and such dramatic character as it may have, primarily 
depend on the natures of the tones used — their loud- 
ness, pitch, and timbre. Quite apart from any organ- 
ization of them, the sounds taken individually are 
causes of emotion, now pleasurable, now painful. 

Loud tones being ordinarily expressive of strong 
feelings, it results that in music there is a certain gen- 
eral relation between loudness and intensity of effect. 
I say advisedly a general relation, because emotions 
of some kinds, and other emotions at some stages, by 
prostrating the heart and thus diminishing the out- 
flow of energy, produce muscular relaxation instead 
of muscular strain; and consequently express them- 
selves in feeble tones. But while recognizing this 
qualifying truth, which is duly recognized in the ap- 
propriate forms of musical expression, we may still 
say that volume of sound is a sign of mass of feel- 
ing, and is in music thus interpreted both by per- 
former and auditor. Here, however, comes in a fur- 
ther truth scarcely at all recognized by either. The 
loud tone expressive of strong feeling is not forced 



DEVELOPED MUSIC. 65 

but spontaneous — is due not to a voluntary but to an 
involuntary excitement of the vocal apparatus. Con- 
sequently a singer's loud tone must be a tone not sug- 
gestive of effort: the muscular strain required must 
be actually or apparently unconscious. But singers, 
professional and amateur, rarely fulfil this require- 
ment; since, usually, their voices are not sonorous 
enough. It results that the musical effect is vitiated 
in a double way : the tone is not of the right quality, 
and the listener's disagreeable sympathy with the 
singer's exertion, deducts from the pleasurable con- 
sciousness, even if it does not produce a displeasur- 
able consciousness. Hence the unsatisfactoriness of 
nearly all singing. Indirectly, a contrast of allied 
origin arises between that kind of instrumental music 
in which effort manifestly accompanies the produc- 
tion of tones, and that in which the production of 
tones has no manifest concomitant of effort. In this 
respect orchestral effects do not compare well with 
the effects of a grand organ. In the one case the 
separate tones mostly lack that volume which is a 
large element in musical satisfaction; while there 
is an unavoidable consciousness of the exertions which 
the many performers are making, and sympathy with 
these, as well as attention to the visible motions, de- 
duct from the pleasure produced. In the other case, 
by their greater volume the tones excite more fully 
the emotions appealed to, while the efforts of the or- 



bb DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

ganist, usually invisible, neither distract the attention 
nor excite any sympathetic strain. 

I pass now to the question of pitch. In the origi- 
nal essay referred to above, I said much about the 
relations of high, medium, and low tones to feelings 
of different kinds, and about their consequent uses 
in music. A fact not there named must here be em- 
phasized. Alike in passionate speech and in music, 
the loudest tones are also the tones which diverge 
most widely from the middle notes of the scale. This 
is a necessary implication. The two traits go to- 
gether because both imply great muscular strain. 
Hence results the ordinary law of expression. The 
fact is familiar that in musical phrases, single and 
successive, increasing ascent is accompanied by in- 
creasing loudness, and succeeding cadences ending in 
notes of medium pitch by decreasing loudness: the 
converse relations in passages below the middle notes 
being also observable when they occasionally occur. 
How essential is this relation (allowing for exceptions 
due to a cause above indicated) will be seen on observ- 
ing the absurd effect produced if a passage be so 
played on the piano as to invert these contrasts. And 
here this reference to the piano suggests a further 
indirect evidence that music is evolved as alleged; 
for otherwise no reason can be given why in instru- 
mental music this same law of expression is followed 
— no reason why high notes should be louder than 



DEVELOPED MUSIC. 67 

medium notes. Yocal music is governed by the physi- 
ological need, and instrumental music is obliged to 
follow its lead; thus showing that it has the same 
genealogy. 

Concerning the quality or timbre of tones, it must 
suffice to say that because they indicate certain feel- 
ings, certain kinds of tones are appropriate to certain 
musical settings of words and inappropriate to others. 
A ridiculous effect would be produced by playing Mo- 
zart's " Addio " on the bagpipes; but if the bagpipes 
be used for rendering " Scots wha' hae," no such ex- 
treme incongruity is manifest: the rasping character 
of the tones is not at variance with the passion ex- 
pressed. Conversely, if the " Marseillaise " be played 
on the flute, anyone may perceive that the tones lack 
adequate power, and do not imply strenuousness. To 
express the sentiment the tones of the trumpet are 
the fittest. As under strong emotions of the unsym- 
pathetic class the voice acquires a metallic ring, seem- 
ingly caused by increase of the overtones, instruments 
which produce overtones in large proportion are the 
best for expressing them; while, for the gentler emo- 
tions, instruments which yield almost pure tones are 
better. Of course these truths are empirically recog- 
nized. I name them only to fill up the outline of my 
argument. 

Incidentally a good deal has been said above con- 
cerning the relational element in music, for it has 



68 DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

been impossible to treat of tones simply as tones with- 
out reference to other tones. We have now to deal 
with the relational element exclusively. Let us con- 
template the facts from the evolution point of view. 
In its correspondence with the general theory of evo- 
lution we shall find support for the special theory 
of musical evolution which here concerns us. 

In those examples with which Sir Hubert Parry 
commences his chapter on " Folk-Music/' we have 
vocal utterances little above the howls and groans in 
which inarticulate feeling expresses itself. There is 
but an imperfect differentiation of the tones into 
notes properly so called. So that we see well exem- 
plified that indefiniteness which characterizes incipi- 
ent evolution in general; and already we have seen 
that indefiniteness continues to characterize the par- 
tially-differentiated tones of savage chants and songs. 

Another trait of incipient evolution meets us in 
the monotonous repetition of rude musical phrases in 
primitive music, choral and individual. A practice 
common among the lower races (by no means un- 
known among the higher) is that when a number com- 
bine in an action of a continuous kind, they accom- 
pany it by a chant : instance the palanquin-bearers of 
India; instance various peoples when they join in 
rowing. Some simple words suggested by the occa- 
sion, and droned out in a simple cadence, are repeated 
in unison by all. And then, sometimes, a change is 



DEVELOPED MUSIC. 69 

made to other words with another musical phrase 
similarly reiterated. Among tribes in the earliest 
stages the like happens with solos. A few words ut- 
tered in tones expressive of joy or grief recur over 
and over again; showing a natural tendency which 
even among ourselves may often be witnessed under 
sudden disaster: " Oh dear me/' " Oh dear me," 
" Oh dear me," being uttered time after time in the 
same tones. An example yielded by the aborigines of 
Australia is given by Sir Hubert Parry on page 49 
of his Art of Music. The significant fact is that one 
of these monotonous chants or songs, displays the in- 
coherence of a product which is but little evolved; 
since it may be broken at any point indifferently. Its 
component passages are not tied together by anything 
constituting them a whole. Then, once more, one 
of these primitive pieces of music, if it can be so 
called, is relatively homogeneous: it is a string of 
parts all alike. Thus we have the relatively indefinite, 
incoherent, homogeneity with which evolution begins. 
But this is not the only kind of primitive music. 
There has to be added that kind generated by the 
emotion with which great achievements are narrated. 
We read that existing peoples, the Araucanians, sing 
the prowess of their heroes, and that the Greenland- 
ers sing of " their exploits in the chase " and " chant 
the deeds of their ancestors " (Essays, vol. ii, pp. 
433-4): thus reminding us of the early Greek poets. 



70 DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

Now a narrative does not allow repetitions of words, 
and, by implication, does not allow those repetitions 
of musical phrases in which repeated words are ut- 
tered. A concomitant is that there is no tendency 
towards rhythm. Though there by-and-by arises a 
metrical form, yet the rhythm of feet in the verses is 
too rapid to lend itself to the rhythm of musical 
phrases. And now, recognizing that this original 
narrative-music, allied to recitative, does not tend to- 
wards repeated phrases and consequent rhythm, yet 
we may infer that it possibly gives origin to a higher 
type of music by the importation of these. A simile 
used in the preceding pages implied that a new char- 
acter may be given to a simple fabric by superposing 
a pattern, though the two are alike in material, and 
though the result is achieved merely by complication 
of the same apparatus. Here the suggestion arises 
that possibly there began an occasional superposing 
on the recitative, of the repeated phrases and the ac- 
companying rhythm above described, and that so a 
species of melody was produced. Or, conversely, it 
may have been that passages of recitative came to be 
intercalated in the choral or solo forms of the re- 
peated phrases. In either way it seems not improb- 
able that there was a mutual influence conducive to 
the development of melody proper. 

Be this as it may, however, traces of development 
can be recognized. The first step is early indicated. 



DEVELOPED MUSIC. 71 

After repetition of the same simple phrase for a 
length of time, there is often a transition to another 
simple phrase which is similarly repeated, and then, 
by-and-by, a return to the first. We are thus shown 
the germs of those compoundings characterizing de- 
veloped music. Repetition of a phrase or of a clause 
is perhaps the commonest trait in melodies. Taken 
by itself this yields that intellectual pleasure which 
we have in the recognition of likeness — a pleasure 
which, though lost in satiety if the phrase perpet- 
ually recurs, is an appreciable pleasure when it re- 
curs once or twice only. Then the second germ 
which these primitive songs or chants contain, we 
see in the transition to a different phrase, which 
is similarly reiterated to weariness, but which, in de- 
veloped music, is dwelt on only to the extent needed 
for yielding the pleasure of contrast. Here is the 
beginning of those multitudinous effects gained by 
changes of theme, now simple now elaborate, which 
composers utilize. A further advance occurs when 
the same phrase is repeated in a higher or lower part 
of the stave. This is the simplest form of a trait 
which, as a means to enhanced pleasure, is a trait of 
Art in general — the union of likeness with difference. 
For if we recognize the activity of the perceptive 
.faculties at large as being pleasurable, it results that 
along with the pleasure which perception of similarity 
gives, there goes the pleasure arising from concomi- 



72 DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

tant perception of dissimilarity: the volume of agree- 
able consciousness is increased. Then, in pursuance 
of the same principle, there comes that combination 
of likeness with difference which is achieved by minor 
variations of each theme — divergences yielding pleas- 
ure from the simultaneous recognition of the agree- 
ment and the disagreement. 

To trace the growing complications as music de- 
velops would need the knowledge of a composer, and 
would too much encumber the argument. It must 
suffice here to note that the gratification due to per- 
ception of similarity is gradually extended to larger 
combinations of phrases and clauses and sentences; 
that the pleasure caused by contrast between one 
complex of notes and another comes to embrace 
longer and more elaborate complexes; that recogni- 
tions of variety in unity are also achieved on greater 
scales; that there arise the likenesses and differences 
due to variations of strength, variations of time, 
changes of key, &c. ; and that, simultaneously, there 
arises the immense collateral development of har- 
mony: the result being an ever-growing heteroge- 
neity. 

Xext we have to note a gradual increase of defi- 
niteness. This is shown in several ways. There are 
the requirements that each note shall occur exactly 
in its place; that it shall have the right pitch; that 
the intervals shall be correct; and that the lengths 



DEVELOPED MUSIC. 73 

of bars and notes shall be carefully observed: proof 
being yielded by the shock that a wrong note 
gives and the annoyance arising from a defect in 
time. 

Then, again, the increasing integration is vari- 
ously displayed. While the whole piece is held to- 
gether by subordination to its key-note, it is held 
together by the relations between similar phrases as 
well as between them and contrasted phrases, sever- 
ally raising expectations which must be fulfilled; and 
it is held together by the relations of its larger parts 
— as when after a theme duly elaborated there is 
change to another theme markedly different though 
congruous, and then presently a return to the origi- 
nal theme : a sense of incompleteness arising if these 
divisions are not all there. Thus there is a simul- 
taneous advance in heterogeneity, in integration, and 
in definiteness. 

But now after noting the traits of evolving music 
which exemplify the traits of evolution at large, let 
us, so far as we may, observe how there arise different 
kinds of music, some of them bearing but indistinct 
traces of their origin. We saw that the musical ut- 
terances prompted by feeling are mostly expressive 
of simple elation — an overflow of good spirits such as 
is shown by children dancing around and chanting 
some nursery rhyme, as well as by artisans whistling 
or humming while at work; and it was suggested that 



74 DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

from this association of pleasurable feeling with vocal 
manifestations of it, arises the vague pleasure caused 
by musical sounds even when indistinctly audible. 
This connexion between spontaneous vocalization and 
agreeable mood of mind, is unspecific in the sense that 
it does not result in particular musical phrases. The 
raised feeling prompts vocal movements of any and 
every kind, just as, when very strong, it prompts ir- 
regular dancing about. 

But though vocal utterances of raised feeling as- 
sume nearly all forms, there are classes of feelings 
expressed only by vocal utterances more or less spe- 
cialized: instance those of melancholy, pity, tender- 
ness, as well as others of anger, courage, defiance, 
&c. : a truth which becomes obvious if sympathetic 
words are uttered in tones like those used in indig- 
nation. But phrases and cadences of these classes 
vary much. Many persons are almost incapable of 
expressing by ascents and descents of voice any of the 
gentler feelings, while there are others whose modu- 
lations clearly imply their presence ; and it is evident 
that combinations of tones like theirs may be devel- 
oped into others which are still more expressive. If, 
with this idea in mind, Beethoven's Adelaide, or some 
of Gluck's melodies, be contemplated, many of the 
cadences may be recognized as idealized forms of the 
appropriate emotional utterances. And if Mendels- 
sohn's " Songs without Words " be listened to, it may 



DEVELOPED MUSIC. 75 

be perceived that some of the musical phrases suggest 
sentiments that are vaguely conceivable. 

Here, then, are implied two types of music, the 
first of which, expressing pleasure in general, is not 
bound to certain classes of figures, and hence admits 
of unlimited expansion and variation; and the second 
of which, expressing feelings more or less special, 
must use figures that are restricted in their range. It 
is the non-recognition of this broad distinction which 
has caused most of the opposition my views have met 
with. 

To explain why certain groups of notes are fitted 
or unfitted for one or other purpose, seems impos- 
sible. But limiting our attention to the great mass 
of music — the music of exhilaration — we may recog- 
nize a contrast between the music of coarse exhilara- 
tion and the music of refined exhilaration. In a post- 
script to the original essay, I named the fact that if, 
after creasing a piece of paper and then opening it 
out, an irregular figure be made with ink on one of 
the folds and the other pressed down upon it, pro- 
ducing a blotted repetition, a certain decorative effect 
is obtained from the symmetry, ugly as the original 
line may be; and I suggested that, in like manner, 
symmetrical arrangements of ugly musical phrases 
yield an effect attractive to the uncultured: musical 
doggerel, we may call it, exemplified in music-hall 
songs and in most of the performances which please 



76 DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

those (well-dressed and ill-dressed) who stand round 
bands at the sea-side. Turning from the music of 
coarse exhilaration we note that whatever be the 
cause — probably a physiological one — certain succes- 
sions of notes and phrases are intrinsically agreeable, 
irrespective of effects produced by their combinations. 
Out of these are woven the musical pieces we may 
distinguish as those of refined exhilaration; since, 
apart from the beauties of symmetry, and contrast, 
and structure at large, their component phrases taken 
singly yield some pleasure, though they do not ex- 
cite distinct emotions. As instances may be named 
many of Cherubini's overtures and many of Mozart's 
sonatas: compositions in which there is little beyond 
a more or less skilful putting together of musical fig- 
ures that are individually without much interest. 

Finally we come to music of the highest type — 
poetical music. Of course this is not sharply marked 
off from the last any more than the last is from its 
predecessor; for in the music of refined exhilaration 
there may be used phrases and figures which, though 
not distinctly emotional, suggest such sentiments as 
are produced, say, by beautiful surroundings or the 
prospect of quiet pleasures. Beethoven's " Pastoral 
Symphony " may be named in illustration. But in 
the highest type of music the phrases, cadences, and 
larger figures, are appropriate to stronger emotions 
of the kinds enumerated above. And here beyond the 



DEVELOPED MUSIC. 77 

pleasure yielded by an elaborated pattern having 
forms pleasing by their likenesses and unlikenesses, 
we have the sympathetic pleasure yielded by these 
idealized utterances which we can imagine express- 
ing our own emotions, had we the requisite musical 
genius. In addition to the beauty of the composition, 
there is the beauty of the components. Of illustra- 
tions, that which comes first to mind is Beethoven's 
Septet; and I may join with this a piece of another 
class which is undeservedly neglected — Haydn's 
" Seven Last Words." 

To end these hints towards an exposition of a vast 
subject let me now bring in an analogy. Already I 
have said or implied that those who combat the hy- 
pothesis here defended, not looking at things from 
the evolution point of view, do not bear in mind that 
in course of time there arise complicated products out 
of simple germs. See, for instance, what has hap- 
pened with the clothing of birds. Feathers were 
originally protective. Saying nothing of those form- 
ing the wings, which fulfil another purpose, it is clear 
that those covering the body originally had for their 
use, and still have in chief measure, the preservation 
of heat. Here appearance was of little importance. 
Passing over cases in which colours that aid conceal- 
ment are acquired, we see that very generally colours 
subserve the end of increasing sexual attractiveness: 
an end superposed on, and quite unlike, the original 



78 DEVELOPED MUSIC. 

end. And occasionally there result feathers utterly 
unfit for the original end. The gigantic ones forming 
a peacock's tail, with their brilliant eye-spots, might 
be supposed never to have had anything to do with 
maintaining warmth; and there are others, as those 
in the crest of a Bird of Paradise, which have almost 
lost the traces of a structure appropriate for covering. 
Yet, undeniably, they are all modifications of pro- 
tective appendages. Their secondary characters have 
disguised and almost obliterated their primary ones. 
In like manner, then, it has happened that out of 
phrases and cadences of emotional utterance — some 
expressing exhilaration and others expressing more 
special feelings — there have been evolved in the 
course of ages musical combinations, some character- 
ized by idealized forms of such phrases and others 
showing no apparent relation to such phrases ; but all 
of them woven into gorgeous compositions differing 
from their rudiments as much as the plumage of a 
kingfisher differs from that of a sparrow. 



ESTIMATES OF MEN". 

Speaking broadly, we may say that the world is 
always wrong, more or less, in its judgments of men 
— errs by excess or defect. Judgments are deter- 
mined less by intellectual processes than by feelings; 
and feelings are swayed this way or that way largely 
by mere personal likes and dislikes, or by the desire 
to express authorized opinions — to be in the fashion. 
Hence a way of discounting opinions is desirable. 
Some guidance may be had by observing their os- 
cillations, and noting the stages in their oscillations 
which at the time being they have reached. 

Let me re-state this thesis by setting out with the 
truth that all movement is rhythmical — that of opin- 
ion included. After going to one extreme a reaction 
in course of time carries it to the other extreme, and 
then comes eventually a re-reaction. This is clearly 
observable in the case of reputations. Time was 
when the authority of Aristotle was supreme and 
unquestioned. Then came Bacon and the reform in 
philosophy which he initiated: the result being that 
the reputation of Aristotle waned and the reputation 

of Bacon became great. In recent days the over-esti- 

79 



80 ESTIMATES OF MEN. 

mation of Bacon Las been followed by a recoil, end- 
ing in an under-estimation : one cause being that men 
have compared his ideas with those of our time in- 
stead of with those of his own time. Meanwhile the 
repute of Aristotle has been rising again and now 
seems likely to become undue. This rhythm is con- 
spicuously illustrated in the case of Shakespeare, who, 
highly appreciated by contemporaries (as witness 
Ben Jonson's lines), fell afterwards into neglect, and 
then, during the present century, has been continually 
rising, until now his position is so high that criticism 
is practically paralyzed and societies occupy them- 
selves with the minutiae of his sentences. 

I name these familiar cases merely as illustrating 
the suggestion that we may usually form some idea 
of the position in which we stand in presence of this 
rhythmical movement: recognizing that neither ex- 
treme of the judgment on a man is true, and then, 
looking at the aggregate evidence, judging where- 
abouts in the oscillation we are at the time being. 
Inspection of the rhythm may lead us to suspect that 
the reputation of Shakespeare is at present too high. 
The judgment of his devoted admirer Ben Jonson, 
who, when told that Shakespeare never blotted out a 
line, remarked that he would have done better to blot 
a thousand, is probably nearer the mark than the 
judgment now current, which implies the belief that 
everything he wrote is good. For to any one un- 



ESTIMATES OF MEN. 81 

swayed by fashion, it is manifest that amid the great 
mass of that which is supremely excellent, there are 
many things far from excellent. Much the same may 
be said of Beethoven. 

An illustration from our own days will give 
greater defmiteness to the argument. Early in the 
seventies the reputation of George Eliot reached its 
zenith. Soon afterwards it began to decline and some 
few years ago had fallen to its nadir. Recently a re- 
action set in. Inspection of these movements will 
make it clear that if the estimate of thirty years ago 
was in excess, that of five years ago was in defect; 
and that hereafter her rank will be considerably 
higher than now. 

Apart from particular instances, however, the 
conclusion is that we ought constantly to find what 
are the needful modifications of current opinions — 
not opinions about men only but opinions about other 
things — by contemplating in each case the rhythm, 
and trying to see whereabouts in it we are: feeling 
sure that the opinion which prevails is never quite 
right, and that only after numerous actions and reac- 
tions may it settle into the rational mean. 



STATE-EDUCATIOK 

Early in life it became a usual experience with 
me to stand in a minority — often a small minority., 
approaching sometimes to a minority of one. At a 
time when State-education was discussed more as a 
matter of speculative interest than as a matter of 
so-called practical politics, I found myself opposed to 
nearly everyone in expressing disapproval — a disap- 
proval which has continued until now, though with 
most it has become a political axiom that a govern- 
ment is responsible for the mental culture of citizens. 

In the forties this question of education by gov- 
ernmental agency was frequently argued between 
myself and a valued friend, who in those days wrote 
letters urging that Church-property should be laid 
under contribution to provide means. Holding the 
views I did even at that time respecting the limitation 
of State-functions,* I opposed, for both general and 
special reasons. The general reason, allied to reasons 
which took definite shapes at a later time, was that 
society is a product of development and not of manu- 

* Set forth in certain letters on " The Proper Sphere of Gov- 
ernment," originally published in 1842 and republished in 1843. 
82 



STATE-EDUCATION. 83 

facture. The special reason, harmonizing with, this 
general reason, was that the law of supply and de- 
mand extends from the material sphere to the men- 
tal sphere, and that as interference with the supply 
and demand of commodities is mischievous, so is 
interference with the supply and demand of cul- 
tured faculty. Many years later my friend con- 
fessed that his experience as a magistrate in Glouces- 
tershire had changed his opinion. It had shown 
him that education artificially pressed forward, 
raising in the labouring and artisan classes ambitions 
to enter upon higher careers, led, through frequent 
disappointments, to bad courses and sometimes to 
crime. The general belief he had reached was that 
mischief results when intellectualization goes in ad- 
vance of moralization — a belief which, expressed by 
him in other and less definite words, at first startled 
me, though it soon became clear that it was congruous 
with the views I had often urged. 

Here I am not about to enter at length on the 
general question of State-education; otherwise I 
should demur to the assumption that any government 
is competent to say what education should be, either 
in matter, manner, or order; I should contest its 
right to impose its system of culture upon the citizen, 
so that under penalty for disobedience his children 
may be moulded after its approved pattern; and I 
should deny the equity of taking, through the rates, 



84 STATE-EDUCATION. 

the earnings of A to pay for teaching the children of 
B. I should, in short, protest once more against that 
political superstition which has replaced the divine 
right of kings by the divine right of parliaments. 
But I must limit myself to the issue implied above — 
denying the commonly supposed connexion between 
intellectual culture and moral improvement; and 
giving evidence that a society is not benefited but in- 
jured by artificially increasing intelligence without 
regard to character. 

To measure the influence for good or evil which 
a forced intellectual culture produces on a nation, 
there is no better way than to contemplate the teach- 
ings of the daily Press, and to observe the effects 
wrought. An extremely apt introduction to the sub- 
ject has recently been exhumed from the pages of The 
Idler. On November 11, 1758, Dr. Johnson wrote as 
follows : — 

" In a time of war the nation is always of one mind, eager 
to hear something good of themselves and ill of the enemy. 
At this time the task of news writers is easy. They have 
nothing to do but to tell that a battle is expected, and after- 
wards that a battle has been fought, in which we and our 
friends, whether conquering or conquered, did all, and our 
enemies did nothing. . . . Among the calamities of war may 
be justly numbered the diminution of the love of truth by the 
falsehoods which interest dictates and credulity encourages. A 
peace will equally leave the warrior and relater of wars destitute 
of employment, and I know not whether more is to be dreaded 
from streets filled with soldiers accustomed to plunder, or from 
garrets filled with scribblers accustomed to lie." 



STATE-EDUCATION. 85 

A century and a half seems to have made but little 
difference. Day by day the reports of the South 
African war have been full of fictions, exaggerations, 
garblings : much has been falsified, much suppressed. 
Instance the statement made soon after the war be- 
gan, in October, 1899, that the crops of the Boers 
were rotting on the ground (doubtless originated in 
London by one who forgot that our autumn corre- 
sponds to their spring), and which was followed some 
months later by the statement that reaping was going 
on; instance the fact that when the force advancing 
to relieve Ladysmith was repulsed, the inhabitants 
were described as receiving the news with equanim- 
ity (!), while in due time there came a letter from 
The Times correspondent in Ladysmith describing 
the "consternation" displayed; instance the reports 
from the several beleaguered places that the bom- 
bardments did no mischief worth mentioning, and 
then the statement made by Mr. Khodes after Kim- 
berley was relieved that about 120 were killed or 
wounded during the siege. Further we have the con- 
fession on the part of a special correspondent that 
misrepresentation was an established policy. 

" A false notion of loyalty and patriotism exists in connec- 
tion with this campaign. Men are branded with the taint of 
disloyalty if they express the opinion that matters are assuming 
a critical aspect — unless they describe a defeat as a victory." — 
The Globe, Feb. 26. 1900. 

And then another correspondent, Mr. F. Young, him- 



86 STATE-EDUCATION. 

self personally concerned, testified that the military 
censorship not only suppressed facts but diffused fic- 
tions. One more instance. Of the Boers concerning 
whom, until recently exasperated by farm-burning 
and women-driving, the accounts given by captured 
officers and men were uniformly good, and of whom 
the late Sir George Grey said — " I know no people 
richer in public and in private virtues than the 
Boers " — of these same Boers Mr. Ralph, correspond- 
ent of the Daily Mail, wrote that " they are neither 
brave nor honourable " ; they are " cowardly and 
dastardly " ; " semi-savage " ; " inhuman " ; filled 
with " Satanic premeditation/' &c. 

And thus reports went on during the winter, the 
spring, the summer: some newspaper readers being 
made increasingly sceptical by these manifest un- 
truths, while the great mass greedily swallowed, as in 
Johnson's day, reports good of ourselves and ill of the 
enemy; until at length from another quarter arrived 
an example of Press-mendacity striking enough to 
shake the general faith. There came first the sen- 
sational account of a massacre at Pekin, describing in 
detail the stubborn resistance of the Europeans, the 
desperate hand-to-hand encounters, the final over- 
whelming of the small band, followed by particulars 
of Chinese atrocities; and then there came in a few 
days proof that this circumstantial account was 
utterly baseless — there had been no massacre, no 



STATE-EDUCATION. 87 

atrocities. Coming home to the public in a more 
startling way than had the multitudinous contradic- 
tions concerning events in South Africa, this drew 
attention to the habitual falsification of news. Proofs 
were recalled that telegrams were largely manufac- 
tured in Fleet Street: four words being sometimes ex- 
panded to 40 ; so that, as writes " An Old Journal- 
ist " in The Times of August 29, 1900, " brilliant de- 
scriptions of battle scenes filling a column were 
evolved from 20 or 30 words of telegraphy." And 
the explanation of the system was that the public 
appetite for sensational news is so keen that journals 
are compelled, as they think, in pursuit of their busi- 
ness-interests, to vie with one another in fictitious 
and exaggerated reports. 

To the foregoing, written in 1900, let me now add 
evidence coming in December, 1901, from two eye- 
witnesses — the writer of Unofficial Despatches, Mr. 
Edgar Wallace, and the writer of With Rimington, 
Capt. L. M. Phillipps. Though these two take oppo- 
site views respecting the conduct of the war — the 
journalist advocating greater severity, and the cap- 
tain greater lenity — they are at one in reprobating 
the systematic perversion of truth resulting from the 
censorship. Mr. Wallace, giving to the Chief Censor 
of Lord Roberts' army the title " Lord High Mutila- 
tor of Telegraphic Despatches," states that while the 
censor would not object to an " unusually optimistic " 



88 STATE-EDUCATION. 

despatch, he would, under fear of the commander-in- 
chief, not dare to pass a pessimistic one, however true 
it might be (p. 325). Meanwhile Captain Phillipps 
tells us that the financial gang " had the press in 
their hands, worked the wires, and controlled and 
arranged what sort of information should reach Eng- 
land . . . ' grievances ' such as would arrest Eng- 
land's attention . . . were deliberately invented " (p. 
106) . . . the Boer mortality, sickness, devastation 
" is a torture long and slow; the agony and bloody 
sweat. ... It is most important that the situation 
should be realized at home, for if it were the con- 
duct of the war would be changed " (p. 211). Thus 
we have indisputable proof that the nation has been 
habitually deluded by garbled reports. 

And now observe the implications, to introduce 
which I have set forth these details. London daily 
journals having circulations amounting altogether to 
probably three millions, and provincial journals hav- 
ing circulations amounting to at least another three 
millions, have been daily distributing these falsified 
reports throughout a population already angered by 
false statements derived from the Cape Press; thus 
generating feelings of savage animosity, which were 
presently exhibited all over the kingdom in brutal 
treatment of those who ventured to think and to say 
that the right was not all on our side. And the pas- 
sions thus manifested were the passions of those who, 



STATE-EDUCATION. 89 

educated by the State up to the level of newspaper- 
reading, had been absorbing every day the self-glori- 
fications and the vilifications of the enemy, eagerly 
looked for. The slumbering instincts of the bar- 
barian have been awakened by a demoralized Press, 
which would have done comparatively little had not 
the artificial spread of intellectual culture brought 
the masses under its influence. Says the Duke in 
Measure for Measure, " There is scarce truth enough 
alive to keep societies secure " — a saying which, 
varied to suit the occasion, becomes, — There is scarce 
truth enough alive to keep societies in health. For 
the war-fever which has broken out and is working 
immense mischiefs, not abroad only but in our social 
state, has resulted from daily breathing an atmos- 
phere of untruth. Is there not reason, then, for the 
opinion that immense evils may result if intellectual- 
ization is pushed in advance of moralization ? * 

* Since this was written there has been furnished to me a 
marked example of one mode in which public judgments have 
been habitually perverted : the witness being one whose long ex- 
perience and high position in the army put him above suspicion 
of adverse bias — Field-Marshal Sir Neville Chamberlain. He says 
that "Never before has anything approaching to such wholesale 
and reckless destruction or abduction of families been enacted by 
a British Army." At the close of July of this year (1901) he sent 
to the Daily Chronicle a letter in which there were passages akin 
to the above, blaming our conduct of the South African war. 
After several days' silence, leading to telegrams of inquiry, he 
got from the editor a proof with the suggestion that certain ad- 
verse passages which contained the pith of the letter should be 
7 



90 STATE-EDUCATION. 

Other evidence pointing to this conclusion is fur- 
nished by the spread of anarchism. Weighed down 
by the pressure of taxation and aggravated by the 
demands of militancy, large parts of the populations 
on the Continent live in a state of chronic discontent. 
The more cultured among them cannot fail to associ- 
ate the miseries they bear with a governmental organ- 
ization which lays hands on their resources and drafts 
into the army hosts of their younger men; and they 
are unable or unwilling to recognize the truth that a 
governmental organization of some kind is necessary, 
and in a measure beneficent. Besides the constitu- 
tionally criminal, those who are led into these erro- 
neous beliefs, and violent acts in pursuance of them, 
are the educated. Without those facilities for com- 
munication which reading and writing and a certain 
amount of knowledge give them, there could not be 
formed these schools of anarchy. Here, beyond all 
doubt, the growth of intellectualization in advance 
of moralization has done enormous mischief. 

We may with certainty say that intellectual cul- 
ture increases the power which the emotions have of 

omitted: the result of the delay, and the tacit interdict, being 
that Sir Neville Chamberlain published the letter in the Man- 
chester Guardian. Thus hindrance was put, as it has all along 
been put, to the publication of opinions at variance with those of 
the dominant party ; while those of the dominant party have been 
widely diffused. The truth has been suppressed by a censorship 
at home as well as by a censorship in the field. 



STATE-EDUCATION. 91 

manifesting themselves and obtaining their satisfac- 
tions — intensifies the emotional life. Were the 
higher emotions stronger than the lower, this would 
be an advantage; or were the two balanced it would 
not be a disadvantage; but, unquestionably, in aver- 
age human beings the lower emotions are more pow- 
erful than the higher: witness the results arising 
from any sudden removal of all social restraints. 
Hence, education, adding to the force of all the emo- 
tions, increases the relative predominance of the 
lower, and the restraints which the higher impose are 
more apt to be broken through. There is a greater 
liability to social perturbations and disasters. 

" So, then, for the sake of social security we are 
to keep the people in ignorance," will be the excla- 
mation of many on reading the above paragraph. 
Widely here, as universally on the Continent, the 
notion is that we must either aid or prevent. There 
is no recognition of that passive policy which does 
neither the one nor the other, but leaves things to 
take their natural course. What has been said above 
does not imply that the working classes shall be kept 
in ignorance, but merely that enlightenment shall 
spread among them after the same manner that it has 
spread among the upper and middle classes: being 
privately aided so far as philanthropic feelings 
prompt; for such feelings and their results are parts 
of the normal educational agency, operative alike on 



92 STATE-EDUCATION. 

giver and receiver. But now, while excluding this 
false interpretation, let me note a strange contrast. 
Social security is thought so supreme an end that to 
achieve it citizens may rightly be deprived of their 
free action and exposed to the risks of death — may 
upon occasion be seized, made to fight, and perhaps 
shot while defending the country. This absolute sub- 
ordination of the individual to the society is in these 
cases not condemned as unjust or cruel. But in the 
case before us it is thought cruelly unjust that for the 
welfare of society the citizen shall be left without 
public aid in rearing his offspring. Social security 
being the end common to the two cases, it is in the 
one thought right that the individual shall be coerced 
to the extent of risking his life, while in the other 
it is thought wrong that he shall be left to do his 
best for himself and children! — wrong not to take 
other people's property to help him! 

One further fact may be emphasized. If supply 
and demand are allowed free play in the intellectual 
sphere as in the economic sphere, and no hindrance 
is put in the way of the naturally superior, education 
must have an effect widely different from that de- 
scribed — must conduce to social stability as well as to 
other benefits. For if those of the lower ranks are 
left to get culture for their children as best they may, 
just as they are left to get food and clothing for them, 
it must follow that the children of the superior will 



STATE-EDUCATION. 93 

be advantaged: the thrifty parents, the energetic, and 
those with a high sense of responsibility, will buy edu- 
cation for their children to a greater extent than will 
the improvident and the idle. And if character is in- 
herited, then the average result must be that the chil- 
dren of the superior will prosper and increase more 
than the children of the inferior. There will be a 
multiplication of the fittest instead of a multiplication 
of the unfittest. 



THE CLOSING HOUKS. 

In his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, 
De Quincy says that opium exalted his appreciation 
of music, and that he commonly took a dose before 
going to the opera. Accidentally I was once enabled 
to furnish a testimony of allied kind. Thirty or forty 
years ago, at times when my nights, always bad, had 
become unusually bad, I sometimes took a dose of 
morphia (the effect of which lasts two days) to re- 
establish, so far as might be, the habit of going to 
sleep. On one of these occasions it happened that the 
day after, I went to a concert at which was performed 
Spohr's Symphony, The Power of Sound. Some years 
before I had heard it with complete indifference, but 
now I listened to it with considerable pleasure. Part- 
ly my sensibility to tones was more acute, and partly 
there was an increased power of appreciating their 
relations and the complexes formed of them. 

I name these facts as suggesting that between the 
feelings of early life and those of late life there is a 
contrast similar to that between the feelings when 
exalted by a nervous stimulant and the feelings in 
their ordinary intensity. As by the phlegmatic the 
94 



THE CLOSING HOURS. 95 

elation of the enthusiastic can never be experienced, 
so in the latter part of life there arises an inability to 
receive sensations and emotions equally vivid with 
those of youth and early manhood. 

These familiar contrasts imply a contrast which is 
not so familiar. Commonly regarded as is the truth 
that as physical strength decreases and the energies 
decline, the average feelings become weaker (I say 
the average because exceptions may be pointed out), 
there is not commonly drawn an obvious corollary 
respecting the closing stage. Those who think about 
death, carrying with them their existing ideas and 
emotions, usually assume that they will have, during 
their last hours, ideas and emotions of like vividness. 
It is true that remembered cases in which there oc- 
curred incoherence and wandering and inability to 
recognize persons, show them that when near death 
the thinking faculty is almost gone; but they do not 
fully recognize the implication that the feeling fac- 
ulty, too, is almost gone. They imagine the state to 
be one in which they can have emotions such as they 
now have on contemplating the cessation of life. But 
at the last all the mental powers simultaneously ebb, 
as do the bodily powers, and with them goes the ca- 
pacity for emotion in general. 

It is, indeed, possible that in its last stages con- 
sciousness is occupied by a not displeasurable sense of 
rest. The feelings accompanying life and all the con- 



96 THE CLOSING HOURS. 

comitant desires are no longer conceivable, for to 
recall them into consciousness implies some mental 
energy. There remains only such kind of feeling as 
accompanies entire quiescence — one which, if not ab- 
solutely neutral, verges more towards the pleasurable 
side of consciousness than towards the painful. But 
however this may be, it is clear that in normal death, 
or the death of decay, or the death of debility, the 
sentient state is the farthest possible from that which 
accompanies vigorous life, or artificially exalted life, 
and that sensations and emotions all gradually de- 
crease in intensity before they finally cease. Thus 
the dread of dying which most people feel is unwar- 
ranted. 

It seems scarcely needful to add that the argu- 
ment does not apply to the death which follows vio- 
lence, or that produced by acute disease. In such 
cases the closing period of indifference is greatly 
abridged. Up to within a very short time of the end 
the vital energies remain sufficient to make emotion 
possible. 



STYLE. 

Eew openly reject the current belief that a good 
style implies linguistic culture — implies classical edu- 
cation and study of the best models. The belief seems 
a rational one, and, often repeated as it is by those 
in authority, is thought beyond question. Neverthe- 
less it is an invalid belief. Let us first test it by the 
principles of inductive logic. 

Even from the method of agreement, which, if 
used alone, yields the lowest order of proof, it de- 
rives but little support. The great mass of those who 
have had the discipline which a University gives do 
not write well. Only here and there in this large 
class may be found one who is said to have a fine 
style: for the rest their style is commonplace when 
not bad. But were the current belief true, a good 
style should be the rule among the linguistically-cul- 
tured — not the exception. Still less justified is the 
belief when tested by the method of difference. Pur- 
suance of this method should show that writers who 
have had little discipline in the use of language or 
none at all do not write well. But again the evi- 
dence fails. Everyone knows that from Shakespeare 

97 



98 STYLE. 

downwards many good writers have had " little Latin 
and less Greek." The untruth of the belief is, how- 
ever, best shown by critical examination of styles sup- 
posed to justify it, or which would justify it were it 
true. Already in The Study of Sociology, after giv- 
ing some samples of incoherent English written by 
a Prime Minister, a bishop, and a head-master, I 
have, in the appendix, subjected to analysis two sen- 
tences quoted with approval by Matthew Arnold from 
the be-praised Addison: pointing out six faults in 
seven lines. Here I propose to continue the criticism 
of classically-cultured writers. 

The preface to a collection of " golden " verse 

ought surely to be a piece of silvern prose — prose 

polished and without flaws. And when such a preface 

is written by one who achieved classical honours and 

has spent his leisure life in the study of literature, 

something approaching perfection is to be expected. 

It is not found, however. The first sentence of the 

preface to Mr. Francis Palgrave's Golden Treasury 

runs thus: — 

"This little Collection differs, it is believed, from others 
in the attempt made to include in it all the best original Lyrical 
pieces and Songs in our language, by writers not living, — and 
none beside the best." 

Whether the endeavour to sink the personal in the 
impersonal by using the expression " it is believed," 
instead of " I believe," is a trait of good style may 



STYLE. 99 

be doubted; since there is given to the reader's mind 
a certain needless trouble in substituting the real 
meaning for the meaning expressed. Passing over 
this, however, let us look at the essential elements 
of the sentence. We are told that the collection dif- 
fers from others. Now a difference between two col- 
lections implies inclusion in the one of some thing, 
or quality, or trait, not included in the other. Here, 
however, the alleged difference consists in " the at- 
tempt made to include." But an attempt cannot 
form part of a collection. An attempt is neither a 
thing, nor a trait, nor a quality, by possession of 
which the contents of one collection can be made un- 
like the contents of another. The results of the at- 
tempt may make collections differ, but the attempt 
itself cannot do so. After passing over six lines we 
reach the second paragraph, which opens with these 
words: — 

" The Editor is acquainted with no strict and exhaustive 
definition of Lyrical Poetry; but he has found the task of 
practical decision increase in clearness and in facility as he ad- 
vanced with the work, whilst keeping in view a few simple 
principles. " 

One question suggested by this sentence is — Why say 
" the task of practical decision " ? That the word 
practical is superfluous becomes manifest if we ask 
what would be the task of theoretical decision. Fur- 
ther, this clause is related to the first merely by sug- 
gestion, not by specified connexion. What the " prac- 

LofC. 



100 STYLE. 

tical decision " is we are not told, but are left to guess. 
Again, it is said that " the Editor has found the task 
increase in clearness and facility." How can a task 
increase in facility? Facility may be gained by one 
who undertakes a task and perseveres, but the task 
itself remains the same. So that this sentence, like 
the other, is incoherent. 

The third paragraph begins with these words : — 

"This also is all he can plead in regard to a point even 
more liable to question; — what degree of merit should give 
rank among the Best." 

You may question a statement, an opinion, or a be- 
lief, for in any one of these something is asserted; 
but you cannot question a point, for a point does not 
assert anything. That meaning is given by the words 
which follow is no adequate defence. Fragments of 
sentences are allowable; but then they must be avow- 
edly fragments. A good style does not permit a sen- 
tence which by its structure professes to be complete, 
but which is meaningless without an appendix. 

And then the fourth paragraph opens as fol- 
lows : — 

"It would obviously have been invidious to apply the 
standard aimed at in this Collection to the Living." 

Now the words " to apply the standard aimed at " 
are incongruous. If you apply a standard, the impli- 
cation is that the standard is some species of measure; 
but if this is the kind of standard intended, then how 



STYLE. 101 

do you aim at it? A thing aimed at must be some- 
thing at a distance; but if the standard in question is 
applied as a measure, it cannot be something distant. 
The words do not suggest a consistent idea. 

The Academy for January 15, 1898, contains a 

notice of " A Forgotten Novel by James Anthony 

Froude "; and on page 79 extracts from it are given. 

The first begins thus: — 

" I take it to be a matter of the most certain experience in 
dealing with boys of an amiable infirm disposition, that exactly 
the treatment they receive from you they will deserve." 
[Shadows of the Clouds, p. 22.] 

!Not dwelling on the opinion expressed, which by the 
words " certain " and " exactly " is made far too defi- 
nite to fit facts of the kinds implied, I go on to say 
that the sentence is ill-composed. One of its defects 
is verboseness. The first twelve words are equivalent 
to " Experience proves." If it be said that the twelve 
are more emphatic than the two, I reply that the two 
are quite emphatic enough for the occasion. Then 
the phrases are anything but classic. The phrase " I 
take it to be," though common as a colloquialism, is 
scarcely fit for literary use. Why not " I think it 
is " ? Instead of a direct statement an indirect one 
may fitly be adopted if the reader's thought is thus 
economized, or if variety of form is needed; but here 
an irrelevant idea, " taking," suggested instead of the 
relevant idea " thinking," has to be mentally correct- 



102 STYLE. 

ed. Nor is the expression " a matter of " to be ap- 
proved. A word used in many relations calls up in- 
definite thoughts that have to be shaped by the con- 
text; implying a suspension. In the various expres- 
sions — " It is a matter of fact," " that's a matter of 
course," " what's the matter " ? " it will cost a matter 
of £5(3," we see that the word " matter," divorced 
from its primary meaning, arouses vague ideas which 
the mind has to eke out thus or thus according to the 
adjacent words. JSTow from a good style are excluded 
all words having unsettled connotations; save where 
indefiniteness is intended, which it is not in this case. 
A more serious objection is that the phrase " I take 
it to be," is incongruous with the phrase " most cer- 
tain experience " ; for the first does not indicate posi- 
tiveness whereas the second is absolute. We cannot 
with propriety link a statement implying some doubt 
with a statement implying no doubt. It is absurd for 
a man out in a thunder-shower to say " I take it this 
is rain," or, " I think it rains " ; and it is similarly 
absurd to join the expression " I think " or its equiv- 
alent to a statement of a fact said to be " most cer- 
tain." Then, again, why " most certain " ? In care- 
less talk union of the two words is common, but 
in writing regarded as specially good we ought not 
to find a word connoting absoluteness preceded by a 
word connoting degree. Finally, and chiefly, comes 
the objection that the sentence is of uncertain mean- 



STYLE. 103 

ing. To say of the boys indicated " that exactly the 
treatment they receive from you they will deserve " 
is to say that if you treat them mildly they will de- 
serve mild treatment, and that if you treat them 
harshly they will deserve harsh treatment. Surely 
this cannot be meant ! In any case, however, the sen- 
tence has the fatal defect that it leaves the reader 
in doubt. 

Another example is furnished by the apostle of 
culture, Mr. Matthew Arnold. On the page of The 
Academy preceding that from which I have just 
quoted, there is a laudatory essay on him, under the 
title " Reputations Reconsidered." In it is repro- 
duced one of his sentences with this introduction: — 
" His own judgment was perpetually guided by the 
principles laid down in a famous passage beginning: — 

1 There can be no more useful help for discovering what 
poetry belongs to the class of the truly excellent, and can 
therefore do us most good, than to have always in one's miDd 
lines and expressions of the great masters, and to apply them 
as a touchstone to other poetry.'" [Essays in Criticism, 2nd 
ser. p. 16.] 

My first remark is that the phrase " useful help " con- 
ceals a pleonasm. A help is defined as a thing which 
aids or assists, and a thing which does that is a useful 
thing; so that a "useful help" is a useful useful 
thing. Instead of " no more useful help " he should 
have written " no better help." We come next to the 



104 STYLE. 

clause — " what poetry belongs to the class of the truly 
excellent." Why all these words? Whatever be- 
longs to the class of the truly excellent is necessarily 
truly excellent. Why then speak of the class? The 
phrase should be : — " what poetry is truly excellent." 
Then, again, the clause " to apply them as a touch- 
stone " is, to say the least, awkward. Surely it should 
be " to apply them as touchstones." Once more, what 
is the use of the final words " to other poetry " ? The 
first part of the sentence has already implied that 
" other poetry " is the thing to be tested. Hence, 
leaving out intermediate clauses, the statement is that 
for discovering what poetry is " truly excellent " cer- 
tain tests should be applied " to other poetry " ! To 
convey the intended meaning the sentence should 
have run: — There can be no better helps for discover- 
ing what poetry is truly excellent, and can therefore 
do us most good, than lines and expressions of the 
great masters kept always in mind and applied as 
touchstones. Or otherwise : — There is no better way 
of discovering what poetry is truly excellent, and 
can therefore do us most good, than to keep always 
in mind lines and expressions of the great masters 
and apply them as touchstones. Thirteen words are 
saved and the meaning definitely expressed. 

In defence it will perhaps be said that these faulty 
sentences have been picked out and are exceptional. 
This is untrue. As the references imply, they have 



STYLE. 105 

not been sought for. The quotations from Mr. Pal- 
grave are respectively the first sentence of his preface 
to The Golden Treasury and the first sentences of the 
next three paragraphs; and beyond reading that pref- 
ace I have read absolutely nothing of his. The quo- 
tation from Mr. Froude is the opening sentence of 
certain passages given by his admiring reviewer. And 
the sample of Mr. Matthew Arnold's writing which 
I have analyzed is the only prose sentence his eulo- 
gist reproduces. A fair inference is that sentences 
similarly faulty are common in the works of these 
three authors. 



STYLE CONTINUED. 

Let it not be supposed that styles free from such 
defects as I have pointed out, are therefore to be 
classed as good styles. I am far from saying or im- 
plying this. Other traits must be possessed — aptness 
of words, variety of form, freshness of metaphor, eu- 
phony — traits which, as I know to my regret, innate 
faculty alone can achieve. My position is that a style 
cannot be redeemed by any or all of these traits if its 
sentences are incoherent, or contain superfluities and 
duplications of meaning. Avoidance of defects of 
construction is a primary requisite ; and praise cannot 
be given to a culture which, promising to insure a 
good style, does not insure its first element. 

It seems strange that the current a priori conclu 
sion respecting the effects produced by the study of 
languages and by familiarity with good models, is 
not verified a posteriori. The absence of verifica- 
tion emphasizes the French saying, " The Style is 
the Man." 

A personal experience has strengthened my belief 
in this saying. More than half-a-century ago some 
106 



STYLE CONTINUED. 107 

incident raised in me the inquiry why certain words 
and collocations of words are more effective than 
others. Up to that time I had paid not the least at- 
tention to style. But the problem then presented led 
me to consider it from a psychological point of view. 
Glances into works on the subject yielded but little 
insight: the maxims I met with were purely empirical. 
The result was an investigation which ended in the 
composition of an essay on " Force of Expression " — 
an essay which was refused by the editor of a long- 
since deceased periodical, Fraser's Magazine. Ten 
years later this essay, somewhat improved, was pub- 
lished in The Westminster Review under the title 
"The Philosophy of Style": the editor's title, not 
mine. One of the conclusions set forth, along with 
the reasons supporting it, was that words of Anglo- 
Saxon origin (I use the name spite of Hr. Freeman, 
since to call them " English " words would here cause 
confusion) are more effective than words of Latin 
origin. Xow this belief, common among others and 
strengthened in me on finding it justified by a gen- 
eral principle, ought to have been specially operative 
on my style. But recently, when revising First Prin- 
ciples, I was struck by the fact that it has not been 
at all operative: the language used in that work is 
markedly latinized. Of course, dealing largely as the 
work does with abstract and general ideas, lack of 
Anglo-Saxon words expressing them, necessitated 



108 STYLE CONTINUED. 

adoption of words derived from Latin and Greek. 
But I found many places where words of home-origin 
might have been used instead of words of foreign 
origin. It was clear that the current maxim, verified 
though it was by my own investigation, had in very 
small measure influenced me when writing. 

And this comparative absence of influence is ex- 
plicable enough now that I remember how little I 
have been guided by other conclusions set forth in 
the essay named — conclusions which I hold still, as 
strongly as when they were drawn. They have never 
been present to me when writing. From moment to 
moment such words and forms of expression as habit 
had made natural to me, were used without thought 
of their conformity or nonconformity to the princi- 
ples I had espoused. Occasionally, indeed, when re- 
vising a manuscript or a proof, one of these principles 
has been recalled and has dictated the substitution of 
a word, or the search for a brief phrase to replace a 
long one. But the effect has been extremely small. 
The general traits of my style have remained un- 
changed, notwithstanding my wish to change some 
of them. There is substantial truth in the French 
saying. Varying it somewhat, we may say — style 
is organic. Doubtless organization may be modified, 
but the function like the structure retains its funda- 
mental characters. 

After reading the above paragraphs the reader 



STYLE CONTINUED. 109 

will be astonished when I say that I have never stud- 
ied style. He will think the assertion flatly contradicts 
much that I have jnst written. Nevertheless the 
statement is true in its broad sense. The essay men- 
tioned, on " Force of Expression/' which had its origin 
in a psychological query, of course covered but a small 
part of the subject. Though when published its title 
was changed, at the editor's instigation, to " The Phi- 
losophy of Style," the substance remained the same; 
and I was presently blamed by him because it con- 
tained as he said " only the backbone of the subject." 
As was thus implied, the essay ignores those traits of 
style which give quality, distinction, or colour; and 
having set forth the psychological conclusions at 
which I had arrived, I thought nothing about such 
traits. It never occurred to me either before or since 
to take any author as a model. Indeed the thought 
of moulding my style upon the style of any one else 
is utterly incongruous with my constitutional disre- 
gard of authority. Nor have I at any time examined 
the writing of this or that author with the view of 
observing its peculiarities. Any criticisms I have 
passed, any opinions I have formed, have been en- 
tirely incidental. Defects such as those above in- 
stanced have indeed often drawn my attention — at- 
tention which is kept ever awake by criticism of my 
own writing; but beyond remarking such defects in 
passing, my observation of style has been limited to 



110 STYLE CONTINUED. 

recognition of conspicuous traits which I like or dis- 
like. I have been repelled by the ponderous, in- 
volved structure of Milton's prose; while, on the 
other hand, I have always been attracted by the fin- 
ished naturalness of Thackeray. And from the ap- 
plause of Buskin's style I have dissented on the 
ground that it is too self-conscious — implies too much 
thought of effect. In literary art, as in the art of the 
architect, the painter, the musician, signs that the 
artist is thinking of his own achievement more than 
of his subject always offend me. 

Here, perhaps, I may fitly say of my own style 
that from the beginning it has been unpremeditated. 
The thought of style considered as an end in itself, 
has rarely if ever been present : the sole purpose being 
to express ideas as clearly as possible and, when the 
occasion called for it, with as much force as might be. 
Let me add that some difference has been made by 
the practice of dictation. Up to 1860 my books and 
review-articles were written. Since then they have 
all been dictated. There is a prevailing belief that 
dictation is apt to cause diffuseness, and I think the 
belief is well founded. It was once remarked to me 
by two good judges — the Leweses — that the style of 
Social Statics is better than the style of my later 
works, and, assuming this opinion to be true, the con- 
trast may I think be ascribed to the deteriorating 
effect of dictation. A recent experience strengthens 



STYLE CONTINUED. Ill 

me in this conclusion. When finally revising First 
Principles, which was dictated, the cutting out of 
superfluous words, clauses, sentences, and sometimes 
paragraphs, had the effect of abridging the work by 
fifty pages — about one-tenth. 



MEYEEBEEE. 

An illustration of that rhythm of opinion com- 
mented upon some pages back, is furnished by the 
reputation of Meyerbeer — once so great, now so 
small. At one time Liszt maintained that he stood 
head and shoulders above the rest : " the rest " no 
doubt meaning composers then living; while Heine 
wrote — " By this work \_Les Huguenots] Meyerbeer 
has won, never again to lose, his citizenship in the 
eternal city of fine minds, in the Jerusalem of celes- 
tial art." At present his name is scarcely heard. 
Les Huguenots is occasionally performed; but among 
those musically educated I have found none who 
knew anything of his music, and some who hardly 
knew his name. There seems no escape from this 
violent action and reaction, and when men have been 
raised too high they must pay the penalty of falling 
too low. But the judicially minded may, in the way 
already indicated, discount prevailing opinions and 
form reasonable estimates. "When one once so high- 
ly lauded comes to be neglected and spoken of con- 
temptuously, we may be sure that the under-estimate 
errs as did the over-estimate, and from the passing 
112 



MEYERBEER. 113 

phase of under-estimation may judge approximately 
where the true place lies. Thus judged, Meyerbeer 
should unquestionably stand much higher than at 
present. 

He is characterized as " theatrical," with the tacit 
implication that he produces his effects by display and 
noise. Was my knowledge of his music derived only 
from hearing his operas fifty years ago, this charge, 
made by those whom the prevailing fashion has car- 
ried away, might have influenced me ; but my opinion 
is largely based upon familiarity with his music as 
arranged for the piano, in which the theatrical ele- 
ment is not present. Being thus enabled to judge, 
I am not afraid to say that the opinion expressed by 
Liszt was much nearer to the mark than is the cur- 
rent opinion. Among faults alleged against him one 
is that he is given to arpeggios and scale-passages. 
Now compositions which, instead of musical thoughts, 
give us combinations of notes implying no thoughts, 
always offend me, and hence I was surprised at this 
assertion. Scale-passages especially annoy me: sug- 
gesting that the composer, " gravelled for lack of mat- 
ter," runs upstairs to find an idea, and being disap- 
pointed comes down again. Wishing to see whether 
arpeggios and scale-passages are really more frequent 
in Meyerbeer than in others, I requested a lady- 
pianist who is with me to count the number of 
them in the first 20 pages of three of his operas, 



114 MEYERBEER. 

and in three of Mozart's operas. The results were 
these : — 

Roberto il Diavolo, 25 scale-passages, 20 arpeggios. 
LeProphete, 18 " 41 " 

Les Huguenots, 15 " 22 " 

making 58 of the one and 83 of the other. In con- 
trast with these there were in Mozart's — 

Don Juan, 60 scale-passages, 31 arpeggios. 

Zauberflbte, 57 " 10 " 

Nozzc di Figaro, 58 " 36 " 

making a total of 175 scale-passages and 77 arpeg- 
gios. So that in equal spaces Meyerbeer has 141 of 
these mechanical successions and Mozart 252. Thus 
brought to the test of numbers the charge is effectu- 
ally disposed of: the "classical" composer Mozart 
being in a far greater degree open to it. 

Then there is the complaint, partly coincident 
with the last, that his ideas are commonplace. This, 
too, surprised me when I met with it, for I am 
impatient of hackneyed musical ideas. Sometimes, 
indeed, to test a composer's originality, I have, while 
listening, observed whether I could often anticipate, 
or partially anticipate, the phrases that were coming, 
or something like them, and when I could, have dis- 
counted my estimate of him. But in this case, as in 
the preceding one, the comparison with Mozart, in- 
stead of proving, disproves the allegation. "When 
having played to me Mozart's Sonatas I find myself 



MEYERBEER. 115 

exclaiming " Stop " or " Skip " : the result being that 
not more than one-third of the movements are 
marked as worth playing: my feeling respecting the 
others being that they consist of familiar figures 
strung together in a new order. When listening to 
Meyerbeer's operas as arranged for the piano, this 
impression is not produced. Even in parts which are 
merely accompaniments to stage-action, though there 
may be little of interest, there is generally much that 
is fresh — very few hackneyed phrases. 

But my chief reason for ranking Meyerbeer high 
is that he combines, better than any composer I have 
heard, the two requisite elements in fine music — dra- 
matic expression and melody. In the scene between 
Raoul and Valentine in Les Huguenots, he succeeds 
in doing that which Wagner tries to do and, as I 
think, without success. Notwithstanding all that has 
been said against him, I shall continue to applaud 
Meyerbeer until there is shown to me some work in 
which truth of expression and melodic quality are 
better united than they are in " Robert, toi que 
j'aime." 

Of course I do not commit myself to any opin- 
ion respecting Meyerbeer's instrumental pieces, of 
which, indeed, I know nothing. I speak only of his 
operas. And my defence is based on the dramatic 
character of his music — his success in expressing 
passion without sacrificing beauty of form. 



THE PUESUIT OF PKETTINESS. 

Criticisms on the lives of our neighbours are 
abundant enough, and some of them turn upon the 
lack of proportion their lives show — now undue de- 
votion to business, now want of useful occupation, 
now absorption in a favourite pursuit, and so on. 
But while the art of living is thus recognized as a 
subject which concerns everyone, there is no deliber- 
ate study of it : haphazard thoughts occupy the place 
of rational conclusions. None try to estimate the 
relative values of ends — how much energy may fitly 
be expended in achieving this class of satisfactions, 
and how much in achieving that class. Choice is made 
without any pre-conception of the need for giving 
each kind of mental or bodily activity its share, and 
only its share, in the aggregate activity. The result 
is that all lives are more or less distorted — usually 
very much distorted. 

This general remark is preliminary to a special 
remark. There is one pursuit which nearly all sup- 
pose may be carried on without limit — the pursuit of 
beauty; or rather, the pursuit of prettiness. Women 
116 



THE PURSUIT OF PRETTINESS. 117 

particularly, by the daily expenditure of their time, 
imply the belief that the chief business of life is to 
please the eye. From the American lady whose idea 
seems to be — Men must work that women may dress, 
down to the British kitchen-maid, whose pleasure dur- 
ing the week is in the thought of vying with her mis- 
tress on Sunday, the ambition which goes before all 
others is to satisfy the aesthetic want; or rather, to 
obtain the admiration which is a concomitant, or ex- 
pected concomitant. 

For referring to these familiar facts the excuse 
here made is that they are parts of much larger facts. 
Originating as do these feelings concerned with visi- 
ble beauty in the desire for sex-admiration, and asso- 
ciated as they become with a desire for admiration 
in general, their influence pervades all actions. A 
motive which prompts the sacrifices shown us by the 
cramped feet of the Chinese women and the stran- 
gled waists of their European sisters, necessarily 
forms a dominant element in consciousness at large, 
and necessarily affects daily life in innumerable ways. 
Given the implied mental attitude, and the question 
— " How will it look?" is certain to be a question that 
perpetually comes to the front. If even bones are 
bent in the effort to obtain admiration, it is inevitable 
that there will be a moulding of conduct in all ways 
with the like aim. Appearance will tend ever to be- 
come a primary end and use a secondary end ; as with 



118 THE PURSUIT OF PRETTINESS. 

the savage who struts about in a mantle in fine 
weather but takes it off when it rains. 

As already said, it is not these immediate results 
but the remoter results to which attention needs di- 
recting. I do not refer only to such remoter results 
as the injuries to health caused by making dress a 
thing to look pretty in rather than a thing to be warm 
in — dress which, sufficient at one part of the day, at 
another part leaves wide surfaces bare; but I refer 
to the ways in which this making of appearance an 
end supreme over other ends, affects the house at 
large and the course of domestic affairs. The cottage- 
wife whose small window is so choked with flowers 
that little light comes in, is not likely to understand 
the consequent evils if they are pointed out; but the 
lady to whom you explain that light is an important 
factor in the maintenance of health — so important 
that patients on the southern side of a hospital re- 
cover faster than those on the northern side — and 
that therefore the sitting in darkened rooms is detri- 
mental, proves no more amenable to reasoning. The 
welfare of the carpet is an end she thinks more im- 
portant than extra health to her family. That the 
polished floor, bordering the carpet, often causes mis- 
chiefs — bruises, sprains, dislocations — and that even 
when no such mischiefs result there is the perpetual 
fear which prompts careful stepping, are not reasons 
sufficient to counterbalance in her mind the reason 



THE PURSUIT OF PRETTINESS. 119 

that the polished floor looks well. With the furni- 
ture, too, it is the same. The choice has obviously 
been determined mainly by the thought of appear- 
ance and very little by the thought of comfort. Here 
in the bay-window is a seat having its surface cut out 
into flowers in high relief; and all around are the 
chairs, some of the fashionable type, some archaic in 
form, and others having pretty carved patterns, but 
nearly all unpleasant to sit in — anti-caller chairs they 
might be named. 

So with the numerous pretty things, or things sup- 
posed to be pretty, which burden the tables, the minor 
pieces of furniture, the brackets, and so on, including 
such absurdities as paper-knives with fret-work han- 
dles. The pleasure derived from them, whether by 
owner or guest, is practically nominal: there is little 
beyond the consciousness that there are pretty things 
all about. Meanwhile, leaving out the question of orig- 
inal cost, they are, in their multitude, constant sources 
of vexation. The doings of careless housemaids entail 
disturbances of temper which form a large set-off to 
any gratifications yielded. ~Not only, to carry out Ba- 
con's conception, does a man who marries give hostages 
to fortune, but also he who accumulates objects of 
value; for each affords occasions for Fortune's malice. 

And then, after all, this too-eager pursuit of aes- 
thetic satisfactions defeats itself. Beauty is not at- 
tained by filling a room with beautiful things. The 



120 THE PURSUIT OF PRETTINESS. 

total effect of a room so filled is destroyed by the sepa- 
rate effects of its contents. These distract attention 
from one another, and in their totality distract atten- 
tion from the room. You may have an artistic in- 
terior or you may have a museum, but you cannot 
have both. It is with the domestic artist as with art- 
ists at large — painters, architects, and others — the 
usual error lies in excess prompted by undue desire 
for admiration. And here, indeed, we come upon the 
further fault implied by this absorbing pursuit of 
sesthetic ends: there is a betrayal of a moral attitude 
of an inferior kind. Eagerness for applause when 
made conspicuous, lowers in the minds of others the 
estimate of one who shows it. And very often it is 
manifest that this eagerness is the predominant mo- 
tive. Illustrations meet us everywhere. Over-orna- 
mented rooms are even more numerous than over- 
dressed women. 

But returning from this digressive criticism, I will 
add only that the way in which the aesthetic end is 
made to dominate over other ends of more impor- 
tance, might be illustrated at length from the dining- 
table ; beginning with the choice of a cook not for her 
culinary skill but for her ability to make pretty 
dishes; passing on to the acquirement of a taste for 
imperfectly-cooked vegetables, because sufficient 
cooking would destroy their bright green (I state 
facts) ; and in various ways showing how palatableness 



THE PURSUIT OF PRETTINESS. 121 

and digestibility are sacrificed to a trivial and transi- 
tory achievement of good appearance. But enforce- 
ment of the thesis has been carried far enough. The 
general proposition that there is no due proportioning 
of the various ends of life, has been exemplified in 
the more special proposition that the aesthetic ends 
occupy far too large an area of consciousness. 

By all means let people have around a few beau- 
tiful things on which the eyes may dwell with pleas- 
ure day after day; but let not life be distorted by 
the distracting of attention from essentials. Here are 
parents whose duty it is to fit children for carrying 
on life, but who, guided by mere tradition or not even 
that, have bestowed scarcely a thought on education 
rationally considered. Here are people required to 
take part in the direction of social affairs by their 
votes, who are still guided by the crudest supersti- 
tions — " good-for-trade " fallacies and the like — who 
never dream of fitting themselves for their functions 
as citizens. And on all sides are those who ignore the 
natural world around, animate and inanimate, the un- 
derstanding of which in its essential principles con- 
cerns alike the right conduct of life and the concep- 
tion of human existence. Meanwhile endless care 
and thought are daily bestowed on a multiplicity of 
things which are expected to bring admiration; 
though, whether things worn or things displayed as 
ornaments, they as often as not do the reverse. 



PATEIOTISM. 

Weee any one to call me dishonest or untruthful 
he would touch me to the quick. Were he to say 
that I am unpatriotic, he would leave me unmoved. 
" What, then, have you no love of country? " That 
is a question not to be answered in a breath. 

The early abolition of serfdom in England, the 
early growth of relatively-free institutions, and the 
greater recognition of popular claims after the decay 
of feudalism had divorced the masses from the soil, 
were traits of English life which may be looked back 
upon with pride. When it was decided that any slave 
who set foot in England became free; when the im- 
portation of slaves into the Colonies was stopped; 
when twenty millions were paid for the emancipa- 
tion of slaves in the West Indies ; and when, however 
unadvisedly, a fleet was maintained to stop the slave- 
trade; our countrymen did things worthy to be ad- 
mired. And when England gave a home to political 
refugees and took up the causes of small states strug- 
gling for freedom, it again exhibited noble traits 
which excite affection. But there are traits, unhap- 
122 



PATRIOTISM. 123 

pily of late more frequently displayed, which do the 
reverse. Contemplation of the acts by which Eng- 
land has acquired over eighty possessions — settle- 
ments, colonies, protectorates, &c. — does not arouse 
feelings of satisfaction. The transitions from mis- 
sionaries to resident agents, then to officials having 
armed forces, then to punishments of those who re- 
sist their rule, ending in so-called " pacification " — 
these processes of annexation, now gradual and now 
sudden, as that of the new Indian province and that 
of Barotziland, which was declared a British colony 
with no more regard for the wills of the inhabiting 
people than for those of the inhabiting beasts — do 
not excite sympathy with their perpetrators. Love 
of country is not fostered in me on remembering 
that when, after our Prime Minister had declared 
that we were bound in honour to the Khedive to 
reconquer the Soudan, we, after the re-conquest, 
forthwith began to administer it in the name of the 
Queen and the Khedive — practically annexing it; 
nor when, after promising through the mouths of 
two Colonial Ministers not to interfere in the in- 
ternal affairs of the Transvaal, we proceeded to in- 
sist on certain electoral arrangements, and made 
resistance the excuse for a desolating war.* ISTor 

* We continue to hear repeated the transparent excuse that 
the Boers commenced the war. In the far west of the U.S., 
where every man carries his life in his hand and the usages of 



124 PATRIOTISM. 

does the national character shown by a popular ova- 
tion to a leader of filibusters, or by the according 
of a University honour to an arch-conspirator, or by 
the uproarious applause with which undergraduates 
greeted one who sneered at the " unctuous rectitude " 
of those who opposed his plans of aggression, appear 
to me lovable. If because my love of country does 
not survive these and many other adverse experiences 
I am called unpatriotic — well, I am content to be so 
called. 

To me the cry — " Our country, right or wrong! " 
seems detestable. By association with love of coun- 
try the sentiment it expresses gains a certain justifica- 
tion. Do but pull off the cloak, however, and the 
contained sentiment is seen to be of the lowest. Let 
us observe the alternative cases. 

Suppose our country is in the right — suppose it 
is resisting invasion. Then the idea and feeling em- 
bodied in the cry are righteous. It may be effectively 
contended that self-defence is not only justified but is 
a duty. Now suppose, contrariwise, that our country 
is the aggressor — has taken possession of others' ter- 
ritory, or is forcing by arms certain commodities on 
a nation which does not want them, or is backing 
up some of its agents in " punishing " those who 

fighting are well understood, it is held that he is the aggressor 
who first moves his hand towards his weapon. The application 
is obvious. 



PATRIOTISM. 125 

have retaliated. Suppose it is doing something 
which, bj the hypothesis, is admitted to be wrong. 
What is then the implication of the cry ? The right 
is on the side of those who oppose us ; the wrong is 
on our side. How in that case is to be expressed 
the so-called patriotic wish? Evidently the words 
must stand — " Down with the right, up with the 
wrong ! " 2s"ow in other relations this combination 
of aims implies the acme of wickedness. In the 
minds of past men there existed, and there still ex- 
ists in many minds, a belief in a personalized prin- 
ciple of evil — a Being going up and down in the 
world everywhere fighting against the good and 
helping the bad to triumph. Can there be more 
briefly expressed the aim of that Being than in the 
words — " Up with the wrong and down with the 
right " ? Do the so-called patriots like the endorse- 
ment? 

Some years ago I gave expression to my own 
feeling — anti-patriotic feeling, it will doubtless be 
called — in a somewhat startling way. It was at the 
time of the second Afghan war, when, in pursuance 
of what were thought to be " our interests," we were 
invading Afghanistan. ISTews had come that some 
of our troops were in danger. At the Athenseum 
Club a well-known military man — then a captain but 
now a general — drew my attention to a telegram 
containing this news, and read it to me in a manner 



126 PATRIOTISM. 

implying the belief that I should share his anxiety. 
I astounded him by replying — " When men hire 
themselves out to shoot other men to order, asking 
nothing about the justice of their cause, I don't care 
if they are shot themselves." 

I foresee the exclamation which will be called 
forth. Such a principle, it will be said, if accepted, 
would make an army impossible and a government 
powerless. It would never do to have each soldier 
use his judgment about the purpose for which a bat- 
tle is waged. Military organization would be para- 
lyzed and our country would be a prey to the first 
invader. 

Not so fast, is the reply. For one war an army 
would remain just as available as now — a war of na- 
tional defence. In such a war every soldier would be 
conscious of the justice of his cause. He would not 
be engaged in dealing death among men about whose 
doings, good or ill, he knew nothing, but among men 
who were manifest transgressors against himself and 
his compatriots. Only aggressive war would be nega- 
tived, not defensive war. 

Of course it may be said, and said truly, that if 
there is no aggressive war there can be no defensive 
war. It is clear, however, that one nation may limit 
itself to defensive war when other nations do not. So 
that the principle remains operative. 

But those whose cry is — " Our country, right or 



PATRIOTISM. 127 

wrong! " and who would add to our eighty-odd pos- 
sessions others to be similarly obtained, will contem- 
plate with disgust such a restriction upon military 
action. To them no folly seems greater than that of 
practising on Monday the principles they profess on 
Sunday. 



SOME LIGHT ON USE-INHEKITANCE. 

The parable of the mote and the beam has appli- 
cations in the sphere of science as in other spheres. 
One striking instance of its aptness is furnished by 
the controversy between the neo-Darwinians and the 
neo-Lamarckians — to use, for the nonce, two inap- 
propriate but convenient names. Contending for the 
sufficiency of natural selection, those of the Weis- 
mann school say to their antagonists — Where are 
your facts ? (deliberately ignoring, by the way, sundry 
facts that are assignable). To these the rejoinder 
made by the believer in use-inheritance may fitly be 
— Where are your facts? If the one insists upon 
inductive proof the other may also do this, and there 
is no inductive proof whatever of natural selection. 
Of the effects of artificial selection the evidence is 
overwhelming, but of the effects of natural selection 
none is forthcoming. Nature cannot select as a 
breeder does with a view to increasing some one trait, 
but can select only those individuals which, by the 
aggregate of their traits, are the best fitted for living. 
Until the production of one species by natural selec- 
128 



SOME LIGHT ON USE-INHERITANCE. 129 

tion is shown, there is not even the beginning of in- 
ductive proof. On the other hand inductive proof 
of the use-inheritance doctrine is not wholly wanting. 
Yet, perpetually, the neo-Darwinians say to the neo- 
Lamarckians — Where are your facts? 

The controversy yields a further illustration of 
the way in which men who see clearly the defects in 
their opponents' hypotheses cannot see the like de- 
fects in their own hypotheses. The doctrine of use- 
inheritance is rejected because of inability to " con- 
ceive any means " by which a modification produced 
in an organ, can produce a correlated modification 
in the germ of a descendant. Yet the alternative 
hypothesis is accepted notwithstanding a kindred in- 
ability which is certainly not less and may be held 
much greater. If Weismann's view is true, such a 
structure as a peacock's tail-feather implies over 
300,000 determinants. Multiply that by the number 
of such feathers and add those of the body-feathers, 
as well as those of all the parts of all the organs, and 
then imagine the number of determinants which must 
be contained in the microscopic sperm-cell. Further, 
imagine that in the course of the developmental 
transformations, each determinant finds its way to the 
place where it is wanted ! Surely to " conceive any 
means " by which these requirements may be ful- 
filled, is not a smaller difficulty if it is not a greater. 

Thus far I have dealt with preliminaries needful 



130 SOME LIGHT ON USE-INHERITANCE. 

for understanding that which is now to follow. Na- 
ture presents us with certain phenomena showing con- 
clusively that structural processes may be effected by 
some play of unseen agencies; though the mode in 
which they can be effected is inconceivable. Two in- 
stances near akin will suffice. 

The beauty of snow-crystals has filled many with 
delight, but few have speculated about the strange 
facts implied by their forms. Though infinitely va- 
ried, they are all of hexagonal type in the arrange- 
ments of their parts, and they are absolutely sym- 
metrical. If one of the rays bears at a certain spot 
a projection on one side there is a corresponding equal 
projection on the other side; and on every ray 
throughout the aggregate there are identical pairs of 
appendages. If in one place there is a complex ap- 
pendage there are like complex appendages at all of 
the answering places. How is this symmetry 
achieved? We have no alternative but to suppose 
that as the snow-crystal descends quietly through the 
upper air charged with watery vapour, accretion of 
a molecule of water at one point is instantly fol- 
lowed by accretions at all the corresponding points, 
and that this is effected by the coercive agency of the 
entire aggregate. Polar forces are said to constitute 
the agency; but of these forces we know nothing. 
The molecular actions by which these beautiful struc- 
tures are built up are inconceivable. 



SOME LIGHT ON USE-INHERITANCE. 131 

Contemplate now a more wonderful phenomenon 
of the same order. Everyone has from time to time 
observed on a bedroom window after a sharp frost, 
a film of crystallized water covering the insides of 
the panes, and everyone has admired the foliaceous 
forms assumed: few, however, pausing to think how 
such forms can originate. In Nature for February 7, 
1901, Prof. T. G. Bonney gives a striking account 
of such structures produced not on a window but on 

a pavement. 

"They form divergent groups, like the sticks of a partly 
opened fan . . . groups, often half a yard in diameter, com- 
posed of frond-like radiating tufts, made up of thin stems or 
acicular crystals (often some four inches long and about the 
thickness of a bodkin) beautifully curved : this almost invariable 
bending of the ' blades ' being the most marked characteristic. 
They resemble very delicate seaweeds, dried and displayed on 
a card as an ornamental group." 

On considering the actions producing these ar- 
rangements, we are obliged to conclude that the 
crystallization goes on in each part under the con- 
trol of all other parts. If the union of water-mole- 
cules into crystals took place at every point inde- 
pendently, or under local influences only, there could 
not be that subordination of the details to the whole 
which produces the symmetrical frond-like structure. 
We must assume that while forming, the entire ag- 
gregate of crystals coerces the molecules in each 
place, while these in their turn join the rest in 
coercing those in every other place. On the one 



132 SOME LIGHT ON USE-INHERITANCE. 

hand it is impossible to deny this orderly subordina- 
tion of parts to the whole, and the reactive influ- 
ence on the whole exercised by each part; and 
yet, on the other hand, we cannot " conceive any 
means " by which these marvellous structural pro- 
cesses are effected. The thing is done but it is im- 
possible to imagine how it is done. 

The bearing of these cases upon the doctrine of 
use-inheritance is obvious. We are shown that im- 
possible though it may be to conceive how any struc- 
tural modification in one part of an organism can 
affect the sperm-cells or germ-cells in such way as to 
give their product a proclivity towards a correspond- 
ing structure, yet it is not unreasonable to suppose 
that they are thus affected. That the play of forces 
by which such a relation is established is unimagina- 
ble, is, as we here see, no reason for asserting that 
there does not exist such a play of forces. 

And, indeed, when we call to mind those advances 
in molecular physics and the physics of the ether 
which have immensely exalted our ideas of the pro- 
cesses everywhere going on, we may perceive that 
the hypothesis of use-inheritance is not at all incon- 
gruous with known facts. Now that by electric waves 
signals are made without wires a thousand miles 
away; now that Rontgen rays are shown to penetrate 
various substances opaque to light; now that from 
uranium and other bodies are found to emanate spe- 



SOME LIGHT ON USE-INHERITANCE. 133 

cial classes of rays which are able temporarily to en- 
dow other kinds of matter with like powers of radio- 
activity; now when we are shown that besides that 
agitation of molecules constituting heat, the mole- 
cules of solid substances give and receive other orders 
of oscillations; we may suspect that the molecular 
influences permeating living bodies transcend our 
conceptions. It is probable that each group of spe- 
cially-arranged molecules composing the constitu- 
tional unit of an organism, is a centre from which 
there radiate the undulations produced by each of its 
multitudinous components; and that such undula- 
tions, diffused throughout the organism, affect the 
corresponding components of other such units: tend- 
ing to produce like oscillations and congruous struc- 
tures. We may infer that there ever goes on a pro- 
cess like that above implied, under which the entire 
aggregate coerces into harmonious forms all the mi- 
nute molecular aggregates composing it, while each 
of these has its share in modifying the rest; and that 
thus any local change of structure becomes a cause 
of change in all the constitutional units, and, among 
others, those contained in sperm-cells and germ-cells. 
Moreover if, as elsewhere suggested (Biology, §§ 54d, 
97/), there is a circulation of protoplasm, this uni- 
versal assimilation of characters must be greatly facil- 
itated. Be this as it may, however, the remarkable 
phenomena above described make it clear that in- 



134 SOME LIGHT ON USE-INHERITANCE. 

ability to " conceive any means " by which acquired 
characters impress themselves on the reproductive 
elements, is no adequate reason for assuming that 
they cannot do this. 

Let me add that much more simply, and still more 
conclusively, may this objection raised by the neo- 
Darwinists to the hypothesis of use-inheritance, be 
disposed of. Huyghens rejected the theory of gravi- 
tation. What was his reason? He said that such an 
attraction as was implied could not be explained by 
any principles of mechanics. That is to say, he could 
not " conceive any means " by which the mutual in- 
fluence of the attracting bodies could be effected. 
Nevertheless the theory of gravitation was estab- 
lished by irrefragable proofs, and has long been uni- 
versally accepted. 

Of course the foregoing paragraphs should form 
a part of The Principles of Biology. But as, in 1899, 
I issued a finally-revised edition of that work, and 
see no probability that I shall ever be able to issue 
another, I decide to include them here. 



PAKTY-GOVEKKMENT. 

Theee is a truth, familiar to every one, over 
which I often marvel — that tremendous results fre- 
quently follow small and apparently irrelevant causes. 
In The Study of Sociology, Chapter XIII, I have 
pointed out that the organic and super-organic sci- 
ences illustrate in an eminent degree what I there 
called " fructifying causation.'' In the phenomena 
they deal with, the " multiplication of effects," seen 
in Evolution at large, is transcendent in degree. A 
disease-germ, getting into the body, produces complex 
derangements great and small throughout numerous 
organs; and, if recovery takes place, sequelae are often 
such as affect disastrously the remainder of life. Sim- 
ilarly in a society, such a simple occurrence as the 
discovery of gold brings multitudinous results — an 
inrush of people, growths of towns, new social ar- 
rangements, gambling hells, demoralization, besides 
much wider effects — new businesses, new lines of traf- 
fic, and the changes presently caused throughout the 
world in the relative values of gold and goods. 

The particular instance of this fructifying causa- 

135 



136 PARTY-GOVERNMENT. 

tion which. I have now in view, dates back to a year 
or two before the last General Election. Whether 
Sir William Harcourt is a total abstainer, or whether 
he was prompted by the miserable delusion that a 
majority has unlimited right to control the acts of 
individuals, or whether he thought that the support 
of the teetotalers at the forthcoming election would 
bring success, must remain undecided; but, for what- 
ever reason, " local option " was made a " plank," as 
the Americans say, in the Liberal platform. Con- 
sidered from a tactical point of view the step was an 
amazing one. During a year or more before the 
election, I often commented on the impolicy of rais- 
ing in every beer-house throughout the kingdom, a 
pronounced antagonism. ~Not even in towns, and 
still less in villages, did the mass of the electors care 
a straw about Home Rule, which was to be the osten- 
sible chief issue; but they cared greatly about the 
threatened interference with the sale of beer. Every 
urban publican had an interest in denouncing the pro- 
posed measure, and every rural publican, sympathiz- 
ing with him, and fearing an extension of the inter- 
ference, joined in the denunciations; while the fre- 
quenters of their houses, threatened not only with 
loss of their beer but with loss of their places of 
resort, were willing listeners and joint denouncers. 
The result, as we all know, was an overwhelming de- 
feat of the party in power and a thrusting of them 



PARTY-GOVERNMENT. 137 

aside by the opposition. Of the multitudinous se- 
quences of all kinds since witnessed, let me first indi- 
cate the most conspicuous set. 

An ambitious man of despotic temper who, in the 
Birmingham municipal government, had learned the 
art of subordinating others, and had by ability and 
audacity forced himself to the front in the central 
government, became Colonial Secretary. That his 
determination to have his own way was the cause of 
the still-progressing war in South Africa, no one now 
doubts. The results to the two republics have been 
the loss of many thousands of lives, the breaking up 
of multitudinous families, the destruction of countless 
homesteads, the desolation of the country, the arrest 
of industrial activities and complete social disorgan- 
ization; while to ourselves the results have been the 
deaths of some 25,000 soldiers on the battlefield and 
in hospitals, as well as the invaliding of 60,000 others, 
many of whom will die and others be maimed, the 
immense increase of financial burdens by taxes and 
loans, the checking of commercial activity, the kin- 
dling of savage feelings causing brutal behaviour of 
mobs, the rousing of hatred of us among Continental 
peoples which will hereafter affect international re- 
lations, and the utter loss of that character for love 
of freedom and sympathy with those who strive for it 
which we before had. These leading effects severally 

ramify everywhere into unimaginable complications, 
10 



138 PARTY-GOVERNMENT. 

infinite in number, world-wide in reach, and hetero- 
geneous in their kinds to an inconceivable degree; 
and all of them were initiated by a small and utterly 
irrelevant shibboleth. For had there been no thrust- 
ing of " local option " in the faces of electors, a pos- 
sible defeat of the Liberal party, even had it occurred, 
would not have given the antagonist party a majority 
so enormous as to enable its leaders to do whatever 
they pleased.* 

But, as indicated above, numerous other sets of 
important effects have followed the seemingly irrele- 
vant cause. It is to these effects, and to the moral 
to be drawn from them, that I would more especially 
draw attention. Those in power, with the support 
of their overwhelming majority, have, even avow- 
edly, legislated in favour of their own class and of 
the classes useful to them. By the Bating Acts of 
1896 they relieved English and Scotch landowners to 

* In addition to the general evidence that change of opinion 
on the question of Home Rule was not the cause of the violent 
party-reaction, there was the special evidence furnished by the 
case of Sir William Harcourt himself. On the occasion of the 
previous election he had been popular with the electors of Derby, 
but at the election of 1895 he was hurled from his seat and a 
Conservative put in his place (a rare thing for Derby, which has 
almost invariably elected Liberals), and then at the recent elec- 
tion (1900), when the question of local option had been practi- 
cally shelved, this Conservative was rejected and replaced by a 
Liberal. The animus against Sir William Harcourt as the ex- 
ponent of the teetotal crusade, could hardly have been more 
clearly shown, 



PARTY-GOVERNMENT. 139 

the extent of a million and a half; imposing that bur- 
den on other rate-payers. In 1897 a " dole " of 
£800,000 a year was given to the " denominational " 
schools, advantaging them in their competition with 
Board Schools and increasing the power of the 
Church. In the shape of relief from agricultural 
rates, Ireland, and in considerable part the Irish land- 
owners, were benefited to the extent of £727,000 a 
year, and equivalent extra burdens were undertaken 
by the State, that is, imposed on British taxpayers. 
Once more in 1899, by the Clerical Tithes Act, ten 
or eleven thousand incumbents were relieved from 
half of the rates they had to pay on their tithe-rent 
charge, and the community at large became responsi- 
ble for that amount. So that, passing over smaller 
encroachments, those in office benefited their friends 
to the amount of over £3,000,000, indirectly taken 
from the pockets of the nation at large. Power given 
in support of a particular policy was used by the min- 
istry to carry out other policies which would never 
have been approved by the electors had they been 
consulted. 

" Well, but what are we to do? " will be the ques- 
tion asked. " All these evils are the results of our 
system of government, and we must make the best of 
them. We cannot avoid having parties. An obedi- 
ent majority will necessarily enable its leaders to do 



140 PARTY-GOVERNMENT. 

things at variance with the wishes of those who put it 
in power. Only by the abolition of party-govern- 
ment, which no one thinks possible, can this mischie- 
vous working out of things be changed." 

I demur to this conclusion. Were every member 
of Parliament true to his convictions — did every one 
resolve that he would not tell falsehoods by his votes 
— did each cease to regard " party loyalty " as a vir- 
tue, and decide to give effect to his unit of opinion, 
regardless of ministerial interests — these over-ridings 
of the national will by a few gentlemen in Downing 
Street would be impossible. 

" But such a course would bring government to 
a deadlock," will be rejoined. " ~No ministry could 
continue in office for a month if it could not count 
upon a body of supporters who would vote for its 
measures whether they approved of them or not. 
Ministry after ministry would be thrown out and pub- 
lic business arrested." 

Here is one of those not infrequent cases in which 
men discussing some proposed change, assume that 
while the change is made other things remain un- 
changed; whereas it is always to be assumed that 
other things will change simultaneously. If repre- 
sentatives, or a large proportion of them, decided 
that they would no longer by their votes say they be- 
lieved things were good which they really believed 
were bad; and if, while receiving adequate support 



PAKTY-GOVERNMENT. 141 

on certain main issues, the ministry was frequently 
left in a minority on minor issues, and, in conformity 
with the present practice, resigned; and if the like 
happened with subsequent ministries; it would pres- 
ently be recognized as unfit that a government ap- 
proved in its general conduct of affairs should resign 
because it was defeated — even often defeated — on 
subordinate questions : especially if those who usually 
supported it, but who were about to vote against it, 
announced that their dissent must not be taken as 
indicating any general dissatisfaction. Only in cases 
where the defeats of the ministry were frequent 
enough to show that its policy at large was con- 
demned, would resignation be the sequence, and the 
appropriate sequence. In all ordinary cases ministers 
would simply accept the expression of dissent, and 
instead of resigning withdraw the offending measure. 
And now observe what would be the general re- 
sults. ]STo longer able to pass measures disapproved 
by the opposition and by many of its own followers, 
a ministry would be able to pass only such measures 
as were approved by a majority of representatives of 
all parties — or rather, let us say, fragments of par- 
ties; and, by implication, would be able to pass only 
such measures as would probably be approved by most 
of the constituencies. A ministry which came into 
power to achieve one purpose willed by the country, 
would not be able subsequently to use its power to 



142 PARTY-GOVERNMENT. 

achieve purposes not willed by the country but at 
variance with its will. That is to say, a ministry 
would become that which its name implies, a servant, 
instead of being what it is now, a master — a servant 
not, as originally, of the monarch, but a servant of 
the house and the nation. 

At present that which we boast of as political 
freedom consists in the ability to choose a despot or a 
group of oligarchs, and after long misbehaviour has 
produced dissatisfaction, to choose another despot or 
group of oligarchs : having meanwhile been made sub- 
ject to laws sundry of which are repugnant. Abolish 
the existing conventional usage — let each member 
feel that he may express by his vote his adverse be- 
lief respecting a government measure, without en- 
dangering the government's stability, and the whole 
of this vicious system would disappear. Constituen- 
cies through their representatives would really come 
to be the makers of the laws they live under. 

But what if each constituency has bound its rep- 
resentative to follow a party-leader? Yes, here comes 
the crux. Political vices have their roots in the na- 
ture of the people. The ability to find candidates 
who will bind themselves to party-programmes, and 
the wish to find such candidates, are alike indicative 
of an average character not fitted for truly free insti- 
tutions, but fitted only for those institutions under 
which despotism is from time to time mitigated by 



PARTY-GOVERNMENT. 143 

freedom. Freedom in its full sense — the power to 
carry on the activities of life with no greater restric- 
tions than those entailed by the claims of others to 
like power — is understood by very few. Illustrations 
of the current inability meet us on all sides. ]\Ien 
who take shares in a company formed for a specified 
purpose and then think themselves bound by the vote 
of a two-thirds majority to undertake some other pur- 
pose, do not perceive that they are aggressed upon — 
do not see that those who have entered into a contract 
are not bound to do a thing which they have not con- 
tracted to do, and that therefore they are wronged. 
Ratepayers who elect members of a municipal gov- 
ernment for the local maintenance of order, and for 
certain public administrations, and then submit to be 
taxed for purposes they never dreamt of (as subscrib- 
ing capital for a canal) if a majority of the elected 
body so decide, fail to understand the nature of lib- 
erty. Similarly those who, joining a trade-union, 
surrender their freedom to make engagements on 
their own terms, and allow themselves to be told by 
their leaders when to work and when not to work, 
have no adequate sense of that fundamental right 
which every man possesses to make the best of him- 
self, and to dispose of his abilities in any way he 
pleases. Naturally, then, it results that those who 
represent electors who are thus vague in their con- 
ceptions of freedom, and deficient in the accompany- 



144 PARTY-GOVERNMENT. 

ing sentiment, must be expected to submit to party- 
dictates, and to say by their votes that they approve 
things which they do not approve. For the present 
there is no probability of anything better, but a prob- 
ability of something worse; for the retrograde move- 
ment now going on towards the militant social type, 
is inevitably accompanied not by relaxation of au- 
thority but by enforcement of it. 



EXAGGEEATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 

I have read or heard that James Mill punished 
his daughters for bad reasoning. What penalties were 
inflicted I did not learn; but so drastic a method of 
dealing with defects of thought, which are in many 
cases due to incurable defects of nature, does not 
commend itself to me. 

I should, however, be inclined to inflict on young 
people certain punishments for exaggerations and 
mis-statements — punishments having relevance to the 
offences and naturally serving to check them. In 
each instance a fit task would be to write out a cor- 
rect definition of the misused word, followed by some 
examples of its appropriate use. The penalty would 
be slight and in all respects improving; since, besides 
impressing on the offender the meaning of the word, 
it would constitute an exercise in definition: there 
would be frequent discipline in exact thinking. Such 
discipline is ignored in the current conceptions of edu- 
cation, though immensely more important than much 
other discipline that is insisted on. Of course parallel 

kinds of penalties might be inflicted for mis-state- 

145 



146 EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 

ments — not mis-statements of things learned from 
books, but mis-statements of the incidents of daily 
life, private and public, which are conspicuous in the 
conversation of both young and old from hour to 
hour. 

All are transgressors, and consequently all take 
lenient views of the transgression. Passing feelings 
prompt stronger words than are justifiable, and the 
desire to interest listeners increases perversions other- 
wise caused. I find that I am myself to be blamed 
for thus corrupting expression : discovering, as I often 
do when revising manuscript, that the word " very " 
had been used where it was uncalled for. From min- 
ute to minute every one utters needless adjectives and 
adverbs. We rarely hear anyone say he has a cold: 
it is nearly always a " bad " cold, or a " very bad " 
cold. If it be a question of weather, then a warm 
day in Spring is spoken of as " hot " : a description 
inapplicable save to days in July or August. Sup- 
posing it should rain moderately, it is said to be 
" pouring " — a word rightly used only in case of a 
thunder-shower or shower like it. Similarly, a little 
thin ice over the puddles is thought to justify the de- 
scription " a hard frost." And if the question con- 
cerns the merit or demerit of a person or perform- 
ance, he or it is represented as much above or much 
below the average. Conversation is thickly sprinkled 
with superlatives, and yet it needs but a moment's 



EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 147 

thought to see that superlatives should occur but 
rarely, since extreme cases bear but a small ratio 
to medium cases. 

Criticisms passed on these licenses of speech are 
pooh-poohed or disregarded. It is forgotten that 
they are manifestations of a habit, and that while 
mostly little or no harm results, the habit occasion- 
ally results in harm that is serious. To say that ex- 
aggerations are of no consequence is to say that it 
matters not whether language conveys truth or error : 
partial and trivial error in most cases, but grave error 
in some cases. My attention has recently been drawn 
to the consequent evils by personal experiences, which 
show that words carelessly used, even in private let- 
ters, may, through a publication never dreamt of 
when they were written, cause mischiefs. 

The first of the experiences to which I refer is sup- 
plied by The Life and Letters of T. H. Huxley. On 
page 333 of Yol. I, in a letter to his German friend 
Dr.Dohrn, jocosely threatening to pull to pieces some 
of his new ideas if he sends them, he, in illustration 
of his threat, refers to me in the following words — 
" I have been 7m devil's advocate for a number of 
years, and there is no telling how many brilliant 
speculations I have been the means of choking in an 
embryonic state." Interpreted with the aid of the 
context, this sentence will, by the critically-minded, 
not be taken seriously; but those who are not crit- 



148 EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 

ically-minded, will give a literal meaning to the ex- 
pression " no telling how many brilliant speculations, 
&c." Feeling that, in the absence of correction, this 
phrase would mislead, I requested my secretary (who 
now writes to my dictation) to compare the original 
MSS. with the printed books. He found that in the 
two works, First Principles and The Principles of 
Biology, occupying three volumes, which were seen 
in proof by Prof. Huxley, there were four speculative 
passages in the MSS. which had disappeared from the 
printed text: one of them, however, having been 
afterwards reproduced by me in an appendix, because 
good warrant for it had become known. A further 
misapprehension results. It was necessary that on my 
biological writings I should have the criticisms of an 
expert, and these were kindly given to me by Prof. 
Huxley; but I did not ask his criticisms on my psycho- 
logical, sociological, and ethical writings, nor on my 
writings of a miscellaneous kind. Nevertheless cer- 
tain other passages in Mr. Leonard Huxley's Life of 
his father leave on most readers, if not on all, the im- 
pression that I received these. There is, on page 68 
of Vol. II, a statement that he had been my " ' devil's 
advocate ' for thirty-odd years " * — the whole period 

* It is probable that Mr. Leonard Huxley, who published in 
the Athenceum for Dec. 8, 1900, a letter making certain rectifica- 
tions I pointed out as needful, has omitted from later editions 
the passage containing these words. 



EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 149 

of our friendship up to the date of the letter; and 
this, joined with mentions of proof-reading elsewhere, 
appears to imply that he read the proofs of the vari- 
ous works written during that time, and that in the 
absence of his restraining influence I should have pub- 
lished in them numerous ill-based speculations. This 
injurious implication, resulting from careless expres- 
sions, I cannot pass unrectified. Out of sixteen pub- 
lished volumes he saw the proofs of three only, to 
which must be added the proofs of some small frag- 
ments. That he was very apt in his letters to make 
statements of too sweeping a kind, the reader may 
himself find clear proof. On page 268 of Yol. II 
(first edition), speaking of use-inheritance, he writes 
— " Spencer is bound to it a priori — his psychology 
goes to pieces without it." Now anyone who turns 
to the first volume of The Principles of Psychology, 
and reads Parts I, II, and III, and then turns to the 
second volume and reads Parts YI and YII may see 
that his statement is quite misleading. It implies that 
were use-inheritance disproved the whole system 
would fall to the ground, whereas it is only in Parts 
IY and Y that use-inheritance is implied; and some 
contend that even the changes described in these 
might be effected by natural selection. This prone- 
ness to over-statement was not limited to letters. 
Published writings exemplify it. The views which I 
hold respecting the limitation of State-functions he 



150 EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 

called "administrative nihilism"; though, beyond 
national defence, I hold it to be the business of the 
State to defend citizens not only from crimes of vio- 
lence and aggression against one another but also 
from all civil injuries down to commission of nui- 
sances (see Essays, Vol. II, p. 442). 

The other instance to which I refer, while it in 
some measure illustrates the mischief done by exag- 
geration, also illustrates the mischief that may arise 
from indeflniteness. In a sketch of my career and 
works published by a warmly sympathetic narrator, 
there occurs this sentence : — " Like Aristotle, he has 
had to delegate large portions of his work to be done 
for him by others." Those who know that the work 
delegated by Aristotle was the collection of materials 
for his Natural History, will rightly interpret the 
reference. But not one reader in ten knows this, and 
hence wrong inferences will probably be drawn. As 
my name is especially associated with The Synthetic 
Philosophy, this sentence will suggest to many the 
thought that " large portions " of it were written by 
deputy. This he did not mean to say. The work to 
which he referred is entitled — " Descriptive Sociol- 
ogy; or Groups of Sociological Facts, classified and 
arranged by Herbert Spencer, compiled and ab- 
stracted by David Duncan, Eichard Scheppig, and 
James Collier " : eight parts of which have thus far 
appeared. Knowing that I should be unable to read 



EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 151 

all the works of travel and history containing the 
facts I should need when dealing with the science of 
society, I engaged these gentlemen — first one, then 
two, then three — to read up for me, and arrange the 
extracts they made in the manner prescribed. With 
much material I had accumulated in the course of 
many years, I incorporated a much larger amount of 
material derived from these compilations when writ- 
ing the Principles of Sociology, and Part II of the 
Principles of Ethics. 

If even the sympathetic are apt to do mischief by 
misused words, what is to be expected from the an- 
tagonistic? Nobody needs telling that the effect of 
animosity of every kind, personal, political, theolog- 
ical, or philosophical, is greatly to intensify exaggera- 
tions and multiply mis-statements. I have had much 
experience in controversy, and speaking with strict 
regard to facts so far as I can recall them — avoiding 
carefully that exaggeration I am condemning — my 
impression is that in three cases out of four the al- 
leged opinions of mine condemned by opponents, are 
not opinions of mine at all, but are opinions wrongly 
ascribed by them to me; sometimes from carelessness 
but more frequently from perversity: seeming, not 
unfrequently, to deliberate. 

In illustration of the extent to which opposition, 
whether expressed in controversy or otherwise ex- 
pressed, prompts injurious misrepresentations, I may 



152 EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 

quote a passage from the Letters of Benjamin Jowett, 

page 190: — 

"I sometimes think that we Platonists and Idealists are 
not half so industrious as those repulsive people who only ' be- 
lieve what they can hold in their hands,' Bain, H. Spencer, etc., 
who are the very Tuppers of Philosophy. " 

I will not ask in what sense the Law of Evolution and 
sundry generalizations of an abstract kind with which 
I am identified, can be severally held in my hands, 
but will interpret this statement in the sense prob- 
ably intended, as an ascription of materialism. One 
might have expected that Prof. Jowett, learned in 
philosophy and practised in making distinctions, 
would not have followed in the steps of less cultured 
theological opponents, whose aspersions I have time 
after time shown to be groundless. It might have 
been supposed that since the System of Synthetic 
Philosophy commences with a division entitled " The 
Unknowable/' having for its purpose to show that all 
material phenomena are manifestations of a Power 
which transcends our knowledge — that " force, as we 
know it, can be regarded only as a conditioned effect 
of the Unconditioned Cause " (§ 51), there had been 
afforded sufficiently decided proof of belief in some- 
thing which cannot be held in the hands. Consider- 
ing that in The Principles of Psychology, § 63, 1 have 
written — " Hence though of the two it seems easier 
to translate so-called Matter into so-called Spirit, than 
to translate so-called Spirit into so-called Matter 



EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 153 

(which latter is, indeed, wholly impossible), yet no 
translation can carry us beyond our symbols," I might 
reasonably have thought that no one would call me 
a materialist. Still more after the elaborate analysis 
contained in §§ 271, 272, showing the untenability 
of materialism, I should have supposed the repudia- 
tion complete. But the charge of materialism is a 
convenient weapon for theological and philosophical 
opponents — a weapon which, knocked out of the 
hand of one, is presently picked up by another — a 
weapon which Prof. Jowett was not ashamed to use 
and to join with vilifying words.* 

* "But perhaps he did not know of these passages," some 
defender will say. I am not aware that one who condemns an 
author's opinions is excused because he does not know what those 
opinions are : rather his ignorance adds to the gravity of his of- 
fence. But the excuse, bad though it is, is unavailing, for Prof. 
Jowett had in his hands the works containing these passages. 
More than the first half of The Synthetic^ Philosophy was origi- 
nally issued in portions of 80 pages to subscribers, who paid ten 
shillings for every four numbers. Prof. Jowett was among the 
original subscribers. When the series had been running for 
seven years, Prof. Jowett, annoyed, I suppose, at the trouble of 
having to pay ten shillings at intervals, sent to my publishers a 
lump sum of £5 to cover future subscriptions. On completion 
of the 44th number I decided to publish the remaining volumes 
in the ordinary way. At that time the £5 sent by Prof. Jowett 
was unexhausted, and the balance was sent back to him. Thus, 
beyond the fact that he was a subscriber from the beginning, 
there is the more remarkable fact that out of about four hundred 
original subscribers, he was the only one who paid subscriptions 
in advance — paid, in fact, ten subscriptions in advance. 

In presence of the quotation which I have above given, these 
statements will be thought incredible: at any rate verification 
11 



154: EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 

Returning from these illustrations to the topic at 
large, let me insist more than thus far, on the enor- 
mous mischiefs which careless speech produces. 
Bloodshed, loss of life, national disaster, are in consid- 
erable measure traceable to it. Passions, alike of in- 
dividuals and of peoples, once aroused are intensified 
by vilifications, often unwarranted from the outset 
and beyond question unwarranted as the passions rise 
to their climax, and men, blinded by fury, utter any 
calumnies which come first into thought. Of course 

will be asked. I therefore wrote to my publishers, thinking that 
though the subscription-book ceased to be used 22 years ago, there 
might yet be found, if not in it yet in some other book of ac- 
counts, a verifying entry. This turned out to be true, as is 
shown by the following letter: — 

14 Henrietta St. , Covent Garden, 
21 August, 1899. 
Dear Sir, — 

In answer to your letter of the 20th inst. it appears from 
the only book to which we can refer that Prof. Jowett paid to us 
the sum of £5 on 12 March, 1867, on account of Synthetic Phi- 
losophy, and that eventually the sum of £1 was returned to him. 
We regret that we cannot trace the date of this repayment, as we 
have not the cash-books or letters of that date. 

We are, &c, 

Williams & Norgate. 

Here, then, is a psychological puzzle. Prof. Jowett's prac- 
tical proof of approbation was inversely proportionate to his ex- 
pressed disapprobation! While showing, in an extremely ex- 
ceptional way, if not his agreement with the Synthetic Philosophy 
yet his appreciation of it, he described its author as an " empty 
sciolist " [words used in another passage]. Prof. Jowett was said 
to be difficult to understand. Here is a problem for his admirers 
which they will, I think, not easilv solve. 



EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 155 

the great mass of the English people will refuse to 
see that our reckless exaggerations and reckless mis- 
statements, have been in large measure to blame for 
the evils we are ourselves now suffering while inflict- 
ing greater evils on others; but they will not refuse 
to see that exaggerations and mis-statements have 
immensely increased the hatred now felt for England 
by Continental nations. They must surely perceive 
that this universal misuse of language is at the present 
moment a source of international danger; since, while 
the French and the Germans are anxious to find ex- 
cuses for fighting us, small incidents may precipitate 
disastrous wars. Obviously the animosity lately gen- 
erated, which, as I hear from a German friend espe- 
cially characterizes the young, may hereafter be a 
cause of wholesale slaughter, resurgence of savagery, 
and vast financial burdens. Hence it is a duty to rep- 
robate habits of exaggeration. I say habits, because 
if words are misused in small and indifferent matters 
they will be misused in great and important ones. It 
is folly to suppose that those who, when trivialities 
are in question, use stronger words than are called 
for, will suddenly become judicial in their speech 
when the things discussed are momentous. 

" So then we are to make our talk prim and ex- 
act and consequently dull: looking at our words be- 
fore we utter them to see that they do not go beyond 
the truth? Why, were that done, conversation would 



156 EXAGGERATIONS AND MIS-STATEMENTS. 

lose all its salt ! " Such is the kind of response to be 
expected from those who exaggerate and who defend 
exaggeration. The response comes appropriately, 
since it illustrates that randomness of thought which 
exaggeration itself does. The implication of the 
above argument is that words which truly express the 
facts should be used in all cases where the obvious 
intention is to express facts; not at all that words 
should be used in this way when there is an obvious 
intention to overstate with a view to cause amuse- 
ment. Humorous exaggeration would be increased 
in effect when it came from the mouth of one who 
ordinarily used words appropriately. 



IMPEEIALISM AND SLAVEKY. 

" Yotr shall submit. We are masters and we will 
make you acknowledge it! " These words express 
the sentiment which sways the British nation in its 
dealings with the Boer republics; and this sentiment 
it is which, definitely displayed in this case, pervades 
indefinitely the political feeling now manifesting it- 
self as Imperialism. Supremacy, where not clearly 
imagined, is vaguely present in the background of 
consciousness. Not the derivation of the word only, 
but all its uses and associations, imply the thought 
of predominance — imply a correlative subordination. 
Actual or potential coercion of others, individuals or 
communities, is necessarily involved in the concep- 
tion. 

There are those, and unhappily they form the 
great majority, who think there is something noble 
(morally as well as historically) in the exercise of 
command — in the forcing of others to abandon their 
own wills and fulfil the will of the commander. I 
am not about to contest this sentiment. I merely 
say that there are others, unhappily but few, who 

157 



158 IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 

think it ignoble to bring their fellow creatures into 
subjection, and who think the noble thing is not only 
to respect their freedom but also to defend it. Leav- 
ing this matter undiscussed, my present purpose is to 
show those who lean towards Imperialism, that the 
exercise of mastery inevitably entails on the master 
himself some form of slavery, more or less pro- 
nounced. The uncultured masses, and even the 
greater part of the cultured, will regard this state- 
ment as absurd; and though many who have read 
history with an eye to essentials rather than trivial- 
ities know that this is a paradox in the right sense — 
that is, true in fact though not seeming true — even 
they are not fully conscious of the mass of evidence 
establishing it, and will be all the better for having 
illustrations recalled. Let me begin with the earliest 
and simplest, which well serves to symbolize the 
whole. 

Here is a prisoner with hands tied and a cord 
round his neck (as suggested by figures in Assyrian 
bas-reliefs) being led home by his savage conqueror, 
who intends to make him a slave. The one, you say, 
is captive and the other free? Are you quite sure 
the other is free ? He holds one end of the cord, and 
unless he means to let his captive escape, he must con- 
tinue to be fastened by keeping hold of the cord in 
such way that it cannot easily be detached. He must 
be himself tied to the captive while the captive is 



IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 159 

tied to him. In other ways his activities are impeded 
and certain burdens are imposed on him. A wild 
animal crosses the track, and he cannot pursue. If 
he wishes to drink of the adjacent stream, he must 
tie up his captive lest advantage be taken of his de- 
fenceless position. Moreover he has to provide food 
for both. In various ways, then, he is no longer com- 
pletely at liberty; and these ways adumbrate in a 
simple manner the universal truth that the instru- 
mentalities by which the subordination of others is 
effected, themselves subordinate the victor, the mas- 
ter, or the ruler. 

The coincidence in time between the South Afri- 
can war and the recent outburst of Imperialism, illus- 
trates the general truth that militancy and Imperial- 
ism are closely allied — are, in fact, different mani- 
festations of the same social condition. It could not, 
indeed, be otherwise. Subject races or subject soci- 
eties, do not voluntarily submit themselves to a ruling 
race or a ruling society: their subjection is nearly al- 
ways the effect of coercion. An army is the agency 
which achieved it, and an army must be kept ever 
ready to maintain it. Unless the supremacy has 
actual or potential force behind it there is only fed- 
eration, not Imperialism. Here, however, as above 
implied, the purpose is not so much to show that an 
imperial society is necessarily a militant society, as 
to show that in proportion as liberty is diminished 



160 IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 

in the societies over which it rules, liberty is dimin- 
ished within its own organization. 

The earliest records furnish an illustration. 
Whether in the times of the pyramid-builders the 
power of the Egyptian autocrat, which effected such 
astounding results, was qualified by an elaborate sys- 
tem of restraints, we have no evidence; but there is 
proof that in later days he was the slave of the gov- 
ernmental organization. 

" The laws subjected every action of his private life to as 
severe a scrutiny as his behaviour in the administration of af- 
fairs. The hours of washing, walking, and all the amusements 
and occupations of the day, were settled with precision, and 
the quantity as well as the quality of his food were regulated 
by law." (Manners and Customs of the Ancient Egyptians, 
Birch's ed. of Wilkinson, vol. I, 166.) 

Moreover the relation between enslavement of for- 
eign peoples and enslavement of the nation which 
conquered them, is shown by an inscription at Kar- 
nak, which describes " how bitterly the country was 
paying the price of its foreign conquests, in its op- 
pression by its standing army." (Flinders Petrie, 
History of Egypt, ii. 252.) 

Turn we now to a society of widely different type 
but exhibiting the same general truths — that of 
Sparta. The conquering race, or Spartans proper, 
who had beneath them the Perioeci and the Helots, 
descendants of two subject races, were not only su- 
preme over these but twice became the supreme race 



IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 161 

of the Peleponnesus. What was the price they paid 
for their " imperial " position? The individual Spar- 
tan, master as he was over slaves and semi-slaves, was 
himself in bondage to the incorporated society of 
Spartans. Each led the life not which he himself 
chose but the life dictated by the aggregate of which 
he formed one unit. And this life was a life of 
strenuous discipline, leaving no space for culture, or 
art, or poetry, or other source of pleasure. He ex- 
emplified in an extreme degree the Grecian doctrine 
that the citizen does not belong to himself or to his 
family but to his city. 

If instead of the small and simple community of 
Sparta we take the vast and complex empire of Rome, 
we find this essential connexion between imperialism 
and slavery even more conspicuous. I do not refer 
to the fact that three-fourths of those who peopled 
Italy in imperial days were slaves, chained in the 
fields when at work, chained at night in their dormi- 
tories, and those who were porters chained to the 
doorways — conditions horrible to contemplate — but 
I refer to the fact that the nominally free part of 
the community consisted of grades of bondmen. ]STot 
only did citizens stand in that bondage implied by 
military service, complete or partial, under subjection 
so rigid that an officer was to be dreaded more than 
an enemy, but those occupied in civil or semi-civil 
life, were compelled to work for the public. " Every- 



162 IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 

one was treated in fact as a servant of the State . . . 
the nature of each man's labour was permanently 
fixed for him." The society was formed of fighting 
serfs, working serfs, cultivating serfs, official serfs. 
And then what of the supreme head of this gigantic 
bureaucracy into which Koman society had grown — 
the Emperor? He became a puppet of the Pretorian 
guard, which while a means of safety was a cause of 
danger. Moreover he was in daily bondage to rou- 
tine. As Gibbon says, " the emperor was the first 
slave of the ceremonies he imposed." Thus in a 
conspicuous manner Rome shows how, as in other 
cases, a society which enslaves other societies en- 
slaves itself. 

The same lesson is taught by those ages of seeth- 
ing confusion — of violence and bloodshed — which the 
collapse of the Roman empire left: an empire which 
dwells in the minds of the many as something to be 
admired and emulated — the many who forgive any 
horrors if only their brute love of mastery is gratified, 
sympathetically when not actually. Passing over 
those sanguinary times in which the crimes of Clovis 
and Predegonde and Brunehaut were typical, we 
come in the slow course of things to the emergence 
of the feudal regime — a regime briefly expressed by 
the four words, suzerains, vassals, serfs, slaves — a 
regime which, along with the perpetual struggles for 
supremacy among local rulers, and consequent 



IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 163 

chronic militancy, was characterized by the unquali- 
fied power of each chief or ruler, count or duke, with- 
in his own territory — a graduated bondage of all be- 
low him. The established form — " I am your man," 
uttered by the vassal on his knees with apposed hands, 
expressed the relation of one grade to another 
throughout the society; and then, as usual, the master 
of slaves was himself enslaved by his appliances for 
maintaining life and power. He had the perpetual 
burden of arms and coat of mail, and the precautions 
to be taken now against assassination now against 
death by poison. And then when we come to the ulti- 
mate state in which the subordination of minor rulers 
by a chief ruler had become complete, and all counts 
and dukes were vassals of the king, we have not only 
the bondage entailed on the king by State-business 
with its unceasing anxieties, but the bondage of cere- 
monial with its dreary round. Speaking of this in 
France in the time of Louis le Grand, Madame de 
Maintenon remarks — " Save those only who fill the 
highest stations, I know of none more unfortunate 
than those who envy them. If you could only form 
an idea of what it is ! " 

Merely referring to the extreme subjection of the 
ruler to his appliances for ruling which was reached 
in Japan, where the god-descended Mikado, impris- 
oned by the requirements of his sacred state, was 
debarred from ordinary freedoms, and in whose re- 



164 IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 

cluse life there were at one time such penalties as 
sitting for three hours daily on the throne — passing 
over, too, the case of China, where, as Prof. Douglas 
tells us of the emperor " his whole life is one con- 
tinual round of ceremonial observances," and " from 
the day on which he ascends the throne to the time 
when he is carried to his tomb in the Eastern Hills, 
his hours and almost minutes have special duties ap- 
pointed to them by the Board of Kites"; we may 
turn now to the conspicuous example furnished by 
Russia. Along with that unceasing subjugation of 
minor nationalities by which its imperialism is dis- 
played, what do we see within its own organization? 
We have its vast army, to service in which every one 
is actually or potentially liable; we have an enor- 
mous bureaucracy ramifying everywhere and rigidly 
controlling individual lives; we have an expenditure 
ever outrunning resources and calling for loans. As 
a result of the pressure felt personally and pecunia- 
rily, we have secret revolutionary societies, perpetual 
plots, chronic dread of social explosions; and while 
everyone is in danger of Siberia, we have the all- 
powerful head of this enslaved nation in constant fear 
for his life. Even when he goes to review his troops, 
rigorous precautions have to be taken by a supple- 
mentary army of soldiers, policemen, and spies, some 
forming an accompanying guard, some lying in wait 
here and there to prevent possible attacks; while sim- 



IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 165 

ilar precautions, which from time to time fail, have 
ever to be taken against assassination by explosion, 
during drives and railway-journeys. What portion 
of life is not absorbed in government-business and 
religious observances is taken up in self-preserva- 
tion. 

And now what is the lesson? Is it that in our 
own case imperialism and slavery, everywhere else 
and at all times united, are not to be united? Most 
will say Yes. Nay they will join, as our Poet Laure- 
ate lately did in the title to some rhymes, the words 
"Imperialism and Liberty"; mistaking names for 
things as of old. Gibbon writes : — 

"Augustus was sensible that mankind is governed by 
names ; nor was he deceived in his expectation, that the senate 
and people would submit to slavery, provided they were re- 
spectfully assured that they still enjoyed their ancient freedom." 
{Decline and Fall, i. 68.) 

" Free ! " thinks the Englishman, " How can I be 
other than free if by my vote I share in electing 
a representative who helps to determine the national 
transactions, home and foreign? " Delivering a bal- 
lot-paper he identifies with the possession of those 
unrestrained activities which liberty implies; though, 
to take but one instance, a threatened penalty every 
day reminds him that his children must be stamped 
with the State-pattern, not as he wills but as others 
will. 

But let us note how, along with the nominal ex- 



166 IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 

tension of constitutional freedom, there has been 
going on actual diminution of it. There is first the 
fact that the legislative functions of Parliament have 
been decreasing while the Ministry has been usurp- 
ing them. Important measures are not now brought 
forward and carried by private members, but appeal 
is made to the government to take them up: the 
making of laws is gradually lapsing into the hands 
of the executive. And then within the executive it- 
self the tendency is towards placing power in fewer 
hands. Just as in past times the Cabinet grew out 
of the Privy Council by a process of restriction, so 
now a smaller group of ministers is coming to exer- 
cise some of the functions of the whole group. Add 
to which we have subordinate executive bodies, like 
the Home Office, the Board of Trade, the Board of 
Education, and the Local Government Board, to 
which there have been deputed the powers both of 
making certain kinds of laws and enforcing them: 
government by administrative order. In like man- 
ner by taking for government-purposes more and 
more of the time which was once available for private 
members ; by the cutting down of debates by the clos- 
ure; and now by requiring the vote for an entire 
department to be passed en bloc, without criticism of 
details; we are shown that while extension of the 
franchise has been seeming to increase the liberties 
of citizens, their liberties have been decreased by 



IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 167 

restricting the spheres of action of their representa- 
tives. All these are stages in that concentration of 
power which is the concomitant of Imperialism.* 
And how this tendency works out where militancy 
becomes active, we are shown by the measures taken 
in South Africa — the proclamation of martial law 
by a governor, who thereby becomes in so far a 
despot, and the temporary suspension of constitu- 
tional government: a suspension which many so- 
called loyalists would make complete. 

Passing by this, however, let us note the extent 
to which the citizen is the servant of the community 
in disguised ways. Certain ancient usages will best 
make this clear. During times when complete slav- 
ery was mingled with serfdom, the serf, tied to his 
plot, rendered to his lord or seigneur many dues and 
services. These services, or corvees, varied, according 
to the period and the place, from one day's labour 
to six days' labour in the week — from partial slavery 
to complete slavery. Labours and exactions of these 
kinds were most of them in course of time commuted 
for money: the equivalence between so much tax paid 
to the lord and so much work done for him, being 
thus distinctly recognized. Now in so far as the 
burden is concerned, it comes to the same thing if for 

* Even while I have the proof in my hands there come the 
new rules of procedure, further diminishing the freedom of mem- 
bers. 



168 IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 

the feudal lord we substitute the central government, 
and for local money-payments we substitute general 
taxes. The essential question for the citizen is what 
part of his work goes to the power which rules over 
him, and what part remains available for satisfying 
his own wants. Labour demanded by the State is 
just as much corvee to the State as labour demanded 
by the feudal lord was corvee to him, though it may 
not be called so, and though it may be given in money 
instead of in kind; and to the extent of this corvee 
each citizen is a serf to the community. Some five 
years ago M. Guyot calculated that in France, the 
civil and military expenditure absorbs some 30 per 
cent, of the national produce, or, in other words, that 
90 days annually of the average citizen's labour is 
given to the State under compulsion. 

Though to a smaller extent, what holds in France 
holds here. Not forgetting the heavy burden of 
St&te-corvees which the Imperialism of past days be- 
queathed to us — the 150 millions of debt incurred 
for the American war and the 50 millions we took 
over with the East India Company's possessions, the 
interest on both of which entails on citizens extra 
labour annually, let us limit ourselves to the bur- 
dens Imperialism now commits us to. From a statis- 
tical authority second to none, I learn that 100 mil- 
lions of annual expenditure requires from the aver- 
age citizen the labour of one day in every seven- 



IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 169 

teen, that is to say, nearly eighteen days in the year. 
As the present permanent expenditure on army and 
navy plus the interest on the debt recently con- 
tracted amounts to about 76 millions, it results that 
13^ days' labour per annum is thus imposed on the 
average citizen as corvee. And then there comes the 
£153,000,000 spent, and to be spent, on the South 
African and Chinese wars, to which may be added, 
for all subsequent costs of pensions, repairs, compen- 
sations, and re-instatements, a sum which will raise 
the total to more than £200,000,000. What is the 
taxation which direct expenditure and interest on 
loans will entail, the reader may calculate. He has 
before him the data for an estimate of the extra 
number of days annually, during which Imperialism 
will require him to work for the Government— extra 
number, I say, because to meet the ordinary State- 
expenditure, there must always be a large number 
of days spent by him as a State-labourer. Doubtless 
one who is satisfied by names instead of things, as 
the Romans were, will think this statement absurd; 
but he who understands by freedom the ability to use 
his powers for his own ends, with no greater hindrance 
than is implied by the like ability of each other citi- 
zen, will see that in whatever disguised ways he is 
obliged to use his abilities for State-purposes, he is to 
that extent a serf of the State; and that as fast as 

our growing Imperialism augments the amount of 
12 



170 IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 

such compulsory service, lie is to that extent more 
and more a serf of the State. 

And then beyond the roundabout services given 
by the citizen under the form of direct taxes and 
under the form of indirect taxes, severally equiva- 
lent to so many days' work that would else have ele- 
vated the lives of himself and his belongings, there 
will presently come the actual or potential service 
as a soldier, demanded by the State to carry out an 
imperialist policy — a service which, as those in South 
Africa can tell us, often inflicts under the guise of 
fine names a slavery harder than that which the negro 
bears, with the added risk of death. 

Even were it possible to bring home to men the 
extent to which their lives are, and presently will be 
still more, subordinated to State-requirements, so as 
to leave them less and less owned by themselves, little 
effect would be produced. So long as the passion for 
mastery overrides all others the slavery that goes 
along with Imperialism will be tolerated. Among 
men who do not pride themselves on the possession 
of purely human traits, but on the possession of traits 
which they have in common with brutes, and in whose 
mouths " bull-dog courage " is equivalent to manhood 
— among people who take their point of honour from 
the prize-ring, in which the combatant submits to 
pain, injury, and risk of death, in the determination 
to prove himself " the better man/ 7 no deterrent con- 



IMPERIALISM AND SLAVERY. 171 

siderations like the above will have any weight. So 
long as they continue to conquer other peoples and 
to hold them in subjection, they will readily merge 
their personal liberties in the power of the State, 
and hereafter as heretofore accept the slavery that 
goes along with Imperialism. 



KE-BAKBAKIZATIOK 

All societies, be they those savage tribes which 
have acquired some political structure or those na- 
tions which have grown vast by conquering adjacent 
nations, show that, as said above, the cardinal trait 
of fighting peoples is the subjection of man to man 
and of group to group. Graduated subordination, 
which is the method of army-organization, becomes 
more and more the method of civil organization 
where militancy is chronic; since where militancy is 
chronic, the civil part becomes little else than a com- 
missariat supplying the wants of the militant part, 
and is more and more subject to the same discipline. 
Further, familiar facts prove that emergence from 
those barbaric types of society evolved by chronic 
militancy, brings with it a decrease of this graduated 
subordination, and there results, as recent centuries 
have shown, an increase of freedom. To which let 
it be added that where, as among ourselves, the mili- 
tant activities have for ages been less marked and the 
militant organization less pronounced, the growth of 
free institutions begins earlier and advances further. 
172 



RE-BARBARIZATION. 173 

An obvious corollary is that a cardinal trait in the 
process of re-barbarization is the re-growth of gradu- 
ated subordination. Let us contemplate the facts. 

The United States furnishes a fit looking-glass. 
Since the days when there grew up local " bosses " 
to whom clusters of voters were obedient, there has 
been a development of " bosses " whose authorities 
extend over wider areas; until now men of the type 
of Piatt, and Hanna, and Croker mainly determine 
the elections, municipal and central. Conventions 
formed of delegates supposed to represent the wills 
of their respective localities, have become bodies 
which merely register the decisions of certain heads 
who nominally advise but practically dictate. And 
so completely has this system submerged the tradi- 
tions of individual freedom, that now the assertion 
of such freedom has become a discredit, and the in- 
dependent citizen, here and there found, who will 
not surrender his right of private judgment, bears 
the contemptuous name of " mugwump." 

In England the Caucus, not yet supreme over the 
individual, has still in large measure deprived him of 
what electoral freedom he had during the generation 
following the Eeform Bill; when, as I know from 
personal experience, the initiative of each citizen 
(even a non-elector) was of some effect. 'Now, gov- 
erning bodies in each constituency undertake to judge 
for all members of their respective parties, who are 



174 RE-BARBARIZATION. 

obliged to accept the candidates chosen for them. 
Practically these bodies have become electoral oli- 
garchies. Similarly in the House of Commons itself, 
this retrogressive movement, shown in ways described 
some pages back, is shown in further ways. There 
is the change which a few years ago cut off " the 
privilege of ventilating grievances before going into 
Committee of Supply " — cut off that which was the 
primary privilege of burgesses sent up from their re- 
spective constituencies in early days; since, on the 
rectification or mitigation of grievances, partially de- 
pended the granting of supplies. And then, recently, 
a kindred resolution has negatived the right of mov- 
ing amendments to the motion for going into Com- 
mittee of Ways and Means. Retrogression is thus 
shown by increasingly subordinating the citizen, alike 
as elector and as representative. 

Ecclesiastical movements now going on, show us 
a kindred change. There is a return towards that 
subjection to a priesthood characteristic of barbaric 
types of Society. Rebellion of the Church against 
the civil power, is an indication of desire for that 
social regime which once made kings subject to the 
Pope. Throughout the hierarchy the strengthening 
of sacerdotalism is the aim, secret if not avowed; and 
the heads of the hierarchy when asked to put a check 
on those practices which assimilate the Church of 
England to the Church of Rome, evade and shuffle 



ftE-BAB-BARIZATION. 175 

in such ways as to let them go on, while they are 
energetic in resisting efforts to prevent the assimila- 
tion. For a generation past there have been endeav- 
ours to mark off the priesthood as a body of inter- 
mediaries between God and man. Confession, the 
performance of a quasi-mass, and various ceremonies 
with incense accompaniment, have tended more and 
more to elevate the clerical class: the effects being 
re-inforced by gorgeous robes and jewelled symbols, 
such as were common in mediaeval days and are akin 
to those of barbaric peoples at large. 

For the changes which have thus been spreading 
throughout our social organization, political and re- 
ligious, there have been several causes. The initial 
one was the setting up of that modest defensive or- 
ganization, well justified under the circumstances, 
known originally as the Volunteer movement. 
When, by his policy, Louis Napoleon made it doubt- 
ful whether he had not in view an invasion of Eng- 
land, there arose something like a cry " To arms ! " 
embodied by the Poet Laureate in his verses " Form, 
riflemen, form." There resulted, and thereafter con- 
tinually grew, a body of civilians who were weekly 
subjected to drill and weekly exercised themselves 
in rifle shooting: both processes awakening in them 
the slumbering militant ideas and sentiments which 
have come down to us from early ages of perpetual 
warfare. The formation into companies and regi- 



176 RE-BARBARIZATION. 

ments, tlie passing through regular evolutions, the 
subjection to officers, the marching through the 
streets after their bands, joined with ambitions to 
occupy posts of command, cultivated in the young 
men of our towns the thoughts and emotions appro- 
priate to fighting. A revived interest in war neces- 
sarily resulted; and the partially dormant instincts 
of the savage, readily aroused, have been exercising 
themselves if not on actual foes then on foes con- 
ceived to be invading us. 

For these twenty years there has been at work 
another widespread cause, which few will at first rec- 
ognize as a cause, but the effects of which analysis 
will make clear. The quality of a passion is in great 
measure the same whatever the object exciting it. 
Fear aroused by a mad dog is at the core like the 
fear produced by the raised weapon of an assassin; 
and the hate felt for a disgusting animal is of the 
same nature as the hate felt for a man very much 
disliked. Especially when the objects which excite 
the passions are imaginary, is there likely to be little 
difference between the states of mind produced. The 
cultivation of animosity towards one imaginary ob- 
ject, strengthening the sentiment of animosity at 
large, makes it easier to arouse animosity towards 
another imaginary object. 

I make these remarks a propos of the Salvation 
Army. The word is significant — Army; as are the 



RE-BARBAEIZATION. 177 

names for the ranks, from the so-called " General/' 
descending through brigadiers, colonels, majors, 
down to local sub-officers, all wearing uniforms. 
This system is like in idea and in sentiment to that 
of an actual army. Then what are the feelings ap- 
pealed to ? The " Official Gazette of the Salvation 
Army " is entitled The War Cry; and the motto con- 
spicuous on the title-page is " Blood and Fire." 
Doubtless it will be said that it is towards the prin- 
ciple of evil, personal or impersonal — towards " the 
devil and all his works " — that the destructive senti- 
ments are invoked by this title and this motto. So 
it will be said that in a hymn, conspicuous in the 
number of the paper I have in hand, the like animus 
is displayed by the expressions which I cull from 
the first thirty lines : — " Made us warriors for ever, 
Sent us in the field to fight . . . We shall win with 
fire and blood . . . Stand to your arms, the foe is 
nigh, The powers of hell surround . . . The day of 
battle is at hand ! Go forth to glorious war." These 
and others like them are stimuli to the fighting pro- 
pensities, and the excitements of song joined with 
martial processions and instrumental music cannot 
fail to raise high those slumbering passions which 
are ready enough to burst out even in the intercourse 
of ordinary life. Such appeals as there may be to 
the gentler sentiments which the creed inculcates, 
are practically lost amid these loud-voiced invoca- 



178 RE-BARB ARIZ ATION. 

tions. Out of mixed and contradictory exhortations 
the people who listen respond to those which are most 
congruous with their own natures and are little af- 
fected by the rest; so that under the nominal forms 
of the religion of amity there are daily exercised the 
feelings appropriate to the religion of enmity. And 
then, as before suggested, these destructive passions 
directed towards " the enemy/' as the principle of 
evil is called, are easily directed towards an enemy 
otherwise conceived. If for wicked spirits are sub- 
stituted wicked men, these are regarded with the same 
feelings; and when calumnies sown broadcast make 
it appear that certain people are wicked men, the 
anger and hate which have been perpetually fostered 
are vented upon them. 

Verifying facts are pointed out to me even while 
I dictate, showing that not in the Salvation Army 
alone but in the Church-services held on the occa- 
sion of the departure of troops for South Africa, 
certain hymns are used in a manner which substitutes 
for the spiritual enemy the human enemy. Thus for 
a generation past, under cover of the forms of a 
religion which preaches peace, love, and forgiveness, 
there has been a perpetual shouting of the words 
" war " and " blood," " fire " and " battle," and a con- 
tinual exercise of the antagonistic feelings. 

This diffusion of military ideas, military senti- 
ments, military organization, military discipline, has 



RE-BAKBARIZATION. 179 

been going on everywhere. There is the competing 
body, the Church Army, which, not particularly ob- 
trusive, we may presume from its name follows simi- 
lar lines ; and there is, showing more clearly the eccle- 
siastical bias in the same direction, the Church Lads' 
Brigade, with its uniform, arms, and drill. In these 
as in other things the clerical and the military are in 
full sympathy. The Eev. Dr. War re, head master 
of Eton, reads a paper at the United Service Insti- 
tution, arguing that in the public secondary schools 
there should be diffusion of the elements of mili- 
tary science, as well as exercise in military drill, 
manoeuvres, use of fire-arms, &c. So, too, another 
head master, the Kev. Mr. Gull, in a lecture to 
the College of Preceptors under chairmanship of 
the Eev. Mr. Bevan, tells us that there are 79 cadet- 
corps in various public schools; that efforts are being 
made to " organize drill in elementary schools and for 
boys in the lower ranks of life " ; that a committee 
of the Head Masters' Conference resolved unani- 
mously that in public secondary schools boys over 15 
should receive military drill and instruction; and 
that, by the suggestion of these " reverend " head 
masters, a Military Instruction Bill, embodying their 
views and favoured by the TTar Office, has been 
brought before both Houses of Parliament.* Simi- 
larly during the Guthrie Commemoration at Clifton 

* See Educational Times, June 1, 1901. 



180 RE-BARB ARIZ ATION. 

College, the head master, the Rev. Canon Glaze- 
brook, in presence of two bishops, glorified the part 
which those educated at Clifton had taken in the 
South African War: enlarging with pride on "so 
noble a contribution in such a patriotic cause " as 
the nineteen old Cliftonians who had fallen; dilating, 
too, on the increasing zeal of the school in military 
matters. And now at Cambridge the Senate urges 
that the University should take steps towards the 
organization of instruction in military sciences. 

More conspicuous growths of like nature have 
taken place. We have the reviews, manoeuvres, and 
training-camps of the Volunteers, and the annual 
rifle-competitions now at Wimbledon now at Bisley; 
we have the permanent camps at Shorncliffe and Al- 
dershot, and are about to have a much larger one 
on Salisbury Plain. Fifty years ago we had no such 
incidents as the " passages of arms " or tournaments 
now held periodically, nor had we any military and 
naval exhibitions. Lastly, showing the utter change 
of social sentiment, it was resolved at a Mansion 
House meeting that the Great Exhibition of 1851, 
which was expected to inaugurate universal peace, 
should be commemorated in 1901 by a Naval and 
Military Exhibition: an anti-militant display having 
for its jubilee a militant display! 

The temper generated by these causes has re- 
sulted in the outbursts of violence occurring all over 



RE-BARBARIZATIOK 181 

England in thirty towns large and small, where those 
who entertain opinions disliked by the majority re- 
specting our treatment of the Boers, have been made 
the victims of mobs — mobs which not only suppressed 
even private meetings and ill-treated those who pro- 
posed to take part in them, kicking and even tarring 
them in the public streets, but attacked the premises 
of those who were known to be against the war, 
smashing shop-windows, breaking into houses, and 
even firing into them. And now after these breaches 
of the law, continued for two years, have been habit- 
ually condoned by the authorities, we find leading 
newspapers applauding the police for having " judi- 
ciously refrained " from interfering with a mob in 
its ill-treatment of Stop-the-War speakers! Surely 
a society thus characterized and thus governed is a 
fit habitat for Hooligans. 

Naturally along with this exaltation of brute 
force in its armed form, as seen in military organ- 
izations, secular and sacred, as well as in the devo- 
tion of teaching institutions to fostering it, and along 
with these manifestations of popular passion, showing 
how widely the trait of coerciveness, which is the es- 
sential element in militancy, has pervaded the nation, 
there has gone a cultivation of skilled physical force 
under the form of athleticism. The word is quite 
modern, for the reason that a generation ago the facts 
to be embraced under it were not sufficiently numer- 



182 RE-BARB ARIZ ATION. 

cms and conspicuous to call for it. In my early days 
" sports/' so called, were almost exclusively repre- 
sented by one weekly paper, BelVs Life in London, 
found I am told in the haunts of rowdies and in 
taverns of a low class. Since then, the growth has 
been such that the acquirement of skill in leading 
games has become an absorbing occupation. The 
cricket-matches of local clubs are topics of interest 
not only in their localities but elsewhere, and the 
names of celebrated players are in the mouths of 
multitudes. There are professionals and there are 
courses of training; so that what was originally a 
game has become a business. Similarly with rowing, 
which has its competitions on all rivers large enough, 
and its set matches, of which those between the Uni- 
versities and those at Henley have become national 
events, drawing enormous crowds, as does also the 
Universities' cricket-match. And then football, in 
my boyhood occupying no public attention, has now 
provision made for it in every locality, and its lead- 
ing contests between paid players, draw their tens of 
thousands of spectators — nay even, as at Sydenham 
lately, a hundred thousand spectators — whose natures 
are such that police are often required for the pro- 
tection of umpires. It may, indeed, be remarked 
that this game, which has now become the most popu- 
lar, is also the most brutalizing; for the merciless 
struggles among the players, and the intensity of their 



RE-BAKBARIZATION. 183 

antagonisms, prove, even without the frequent in- 
flictions of injuries and occasional deaths, that the 
game approaches as nearly to a fight as lack of weap- 
ons allows. 

" Sports " of past times, which law had forbidden 
because of their brutality, are re-appearing. Occa- 
sionally one reads of secret cock-fights discovered by 
the police and stopped; and now, in the resuscitated 
periodical of Johnson, The Rambler, there is a delib- 
erate advocacy of cock-fighting as an amusement. Of 
like meaning is the revival of pugilism: the illegal 
prize-fights having been replaced by so-called " glove- 
fights," differing but nominally. Though within 
these few years four deaths have resulted, yet such 
is the sympathy of the authorities with the " sport," 
so called, that the manslaughters have on one or other, 
plea been in every case condoned. Along with this 
development of human athletics has gone a develop- 
ment of animal athletics, or racing, under the form 
of increase in the number of race-meetings ; and both 
kinds have been accompanied by an immense exten- 
sion of betting and gambling — vices pervading all 
classes and all places, from fashionable drawing-rooms 
down to slums — vices furthering re-barbarization, 
since pleasures obtained at the cost of pains to others, 
necessarily entail a searing of the sympathies. 

Meanwhile, to satisfy the demand journalism has 
been developing, so that besides sundry daily and 



1 84 RE-BARB ARIZ ATION. 

weekly papers devoted wholly to sports, the ordinary 
daily and weekly papers give reports of " events " in 
all localities, and not unfrequently a daily paper has 
a whole page occupied with them. A grave con- 
comitant is to be noted. While bodily superiority 
is coming to the front, mental superiority is retreat- 
ing into the background. It has long been remarked 
that a noted athlete is more honoured than a student 
who has come out highest from the examinations; 
and if there needs ocular proof we have it in the 
illustrated papers, which continually reproduce pho- 
tographs of competing crews and competing teams, 
while nowhere do we see a photograph of, say, all 
the wranglers of the year. How extreme is this pre- 
dominance of athleticism is shown by the fact that 
Sir Michael Foster, when a candidate for the repre- 
sentation of the University of London, was described 
as specially fitted because he was a good cricketer! 
" All cricketers will, of course, vote for him," wrote 
in The Times a B.A. who had " played in the same 
eleven with him." Thus various changes point back 
to those mediaeval days when courage and bodily 
power were the sole qualifications of the ruling 
classes, while such culture as existed was confined to 
priests and the inmates of monasteries. 

Literature, journalism, and art, have all been aid- 
ing in this process of re-barbarization. For a long 
time there have flourished novel-writers who have 



RE-BAKBARIZATION. 185 

rung the changes on narratives of crime and stories 
of sanguinary deeds. Others have been supplying 
boys and youths with tales full of plotting and fight- 
ing and bloodshed: millions of such having of late 
years been circulated;* and there have been numer- 
ous volumes of travel in which encounters with na- 
tives and the killing of big game have been the ad- 
vertised attractions. Various war-books have fol- 
lowed in the wake of Prof. Creasy's Fifteen Decisive 
Battles of the World with its thirty-odd editions; and 
now, in the current number of the Athenceum, I see 
noted as forthcoming two works of this genus — the 
one, Great Battles of the World, and the other All 
the World 7 s Fighting Ships for 1901, an annual pub- 
lication. As indicating most clearly the state of na- 
tional feeling, we have the immense popularity of 
Mr. Rudyard Kipling, in whose writings one-tenth 
of nominal Christianity is joined with nine-tenths of 
real paganism; who idealizes the soldier and glories 
in the triumphs of brute force ; and who, in depicting 
school-life, brings to the front the barbarizing activ- 
ities and feelings and shows little respect for a civil- 
izing culture. 

So, too, the literature of the periodicals reeks 

with violence. In the American magazines having 

wide English circulations, there went on, even before 

the recent conquests, rechauffe narratives of the Civil 

* See Academy, June 5, 1897. 



186 RE-BARBARIZATION. 

War — accounts of this or the other part of the cam- 
paign and biographies of this or the other leader. 
Not content with battles and great captains of recent 
times, editors have, to satisfy the appetites of read- 
ers, gone back to the remote past as well as to the 
near past. The life and conquests of Alexander the 
Great have been set forth afresh with illustrations; 
and in serial articles, as also in book form, Napoleon 
has again served as a subject for biography: Welling- 
ton and Nelson too, have been resuscitated. Nay, 
even memoirs of celebrated pirates and privateers 
have been exhumed to meet the demand. At the 
same time the fiction filling our monthly magazines, 
has been mainly sanguinary. Tales of crimes and 
deeds of violence, drawings of men fighting, men 
overpowered, men escaping, of daggers raised, pis- 
tols levelled — these, in all varieties of combination, 
have appealed to our latent savagery. Among other 
stories of this class there were recently two in each 
of which the attraction was a prize-fight, made pi- 
quant by wood-cuts. So has it been with our pic- 
torial newspapers. Even before the recent wars there 
were ever found occasions for representing bloody 
combats, or else the appliances of destruction naval 
and military, or else the leading men using them. 
I suppose that of late such scenes and portraits have 
been more numerous still — I say I suppose, because 
for years past, disgusted with these stimuli to brutal- 



RE-BARBARIZATION, 187 

ity, I have deliberately avoided looking at the illus- 
trated weekly journals. 

Thus on every side we see the ideas and feelings 
and institutions appropriate to peaceful life, replaced 
by those appropriate to fighting life. The continual 
increases of the army, the formation of permanent 
camps, the institution of public military contests and 
military exhibitions, have conduced to this result. 
The drills, and displays, and competitions, of civilian 
soldiers (not uncalled for when they began) have gone 
on exercising the combative feelings. Perpetual ex- 
citements of the destructive passions which, in the 
War Cry and in the hymns of General Booth's fol- 
lowers, have made battle and blood and fire familiar, 
and under the guise of fighting against evil have 
thrust into the background the gentler emotions, have 
done the like. Similarly in schools, military organiza- 
ation and discipline have been cultivating the instinct 
of antagonism in each rising generation. More and 
more the spirit of conflict has been exercised by 
athletic games, interest in which has been actively 
fostered first by the weekly Press and now by the 
daily Press; and with increase of the honours given 
to physical prowess there has been decrease of the 
honours given to mental prowess. Meanwhile liter- 
ature and art have been aiding. Books treating of 
battles, conquests, and the men who conducted them, 
have been widely diffused and greedily read. Peri- 



188 RE-BARBARIZATION. 

odicals full of stories made interesting by killing, 
with accompanying illustrations, have every month 
ministered to the love of destruction; as have, too, 
the weekly illustrated journals. In all places and 
in all ways there has been going on during the past 
fifty years a recrudescence of barbaric ambitions, 
ideas and sentiments and an unceasing culture of 
blood-thirst. 

If there needs a striking illustration of the result, 
we have it in the dictum of the people's Laureate, 
that the " lordliest life on earth " is one spent in 
seeking to " bag " certain of our fellow-men! 



REGIMENTATION. 

At first sight the title " Regimentation " seems 
to imply nothing more than a description in detail 
of the changes set forth above; bnt while in part it 
brings into view one side of these changes, and sug- 
gests their common tendency, it serves a further end. 
I use it here to express certain wider changes which 
are their concomitants. For as indicated some pages 
back, and as shown at length in The Principles of 
Sociology, in a chapter on " The Militant Type," that 
graduated subordination which we see in an army, 
characterizes a militant society at large more and 
more as militancy increases. 

System, regulation, uniformity, compulsion — 
these words are being made familiar in discussions 
on social questions. Everywhere has arisen an un- 
questioned assumption that all things should be ar- 
ranged after a definite plan. The recent course of 
public opinion shows how powerless, when opposed 
to prejudices and fancies, are those large truths which 
science discloses. One might have thought that in 
these days when it has been proved that the progress 

189 



190 REGIMENTATION. 

of all life has been made possible only by unceasing 
variations, and that uniformity implies quiescence 
ending in death — one might have thought that the 
tendency would be, if not to foster variety, at any 
rate to give full opportunity for it. Yet a re- 
verse tendency has been produced by the causes ex- 
plained. 

Though we have not reached a state like that 
boasted of by a French minister who said — " Now all 
the children in France are saying the same lesson," 
yet if we compare our present state with our state 
before board-schools were set up, we see a movement 
towards a like ideal. "We have a " Code " to which 
managers and teachers must conform; and we have 
inspectors who see that the conceptions of the cen- 
tral authority are carried out. So far along some 
lines has the regimental system gone, that the Board 
of Education has had power to direct the metric sys- 
tem to be taught : over-taxed children are, at the will 
of the commanding officer, made to learn sets of meas- 
ures which are not in use. Moreover, out of the 
elementary course there has developed a secondary 
course; and now have come technical schools to give 
boys knowledge and aptitude fitting them for various 
businesses. Schools of science, art-schools, and 
schools of design, too, have been set up; so that the 
State now prepares its pupils not for life in general 
only, but also for special careers. Meanwhile, as I 



REGIMENTATION. 191 

prophesied thirty years ago would happen, the step 
has been taken from rearing the mind to rearing the 
body. In pursuance of the dogma that it is the duty 
of the community towards the child " to see that it 
has a proper chance as regards its equipment in life," 
it is held that food must be provided for hungry chil- 
dren; and there have been proposals to give shoes if 
parents fail to supply them. When it is added that 
there are over 30,000 children in industrial and tru- 
ant schools, maintained and officered by the State, 
we see that even in a single generation great strides 
have been taken towards a regimental organization 
for moulding children after an approved pattern. 

Having been prepared for life by government, 
citizens must have their activities controlled by law. 
The late Mr. Pleydell-Bouverie found that in Eliza- 
beth's reign, out of 269 Acts, 68 were for regulating 
trade; and under James the First 33 out of 167 were 
similarly directed. These, all found useless or mis- 
chievous, have been repealed. But now, along with 
resuscitation of an older social type, there is a recur- 
rence of old leanings towards the State-overseeing 
of industry. The restriction of child-labour in fac- 
tories opened the way for regulations protecting more 
and more numerous classes of workers. Though the 
loss suffered by a mine-owner from an explosion is a 
stronger deterrent from risks than anything else, yet 
it is thought that precautions against explosions, can 



192 REGIMENTATION. 

be insured only by inspectors : a belief which survives 
frequent explosions. The State, which has many ac- 
cidents to its own vessels and often loses them, under- 
takes to protect men in the merchant service through 
a body of officials; though judging from the number 
of shipwrecks the effect is not manifest. 

But let us turn from these scattered examples to 
examples of more general kinds. During the first 
part of the nineteenth century, while yet municipal 
governments were undeveloped, the activities of each 
were limited to a few all-essential matters — the main- 
tenance of order by a small staff of constables, the 
paving and cleaning of the streets, the lighting of 
them by oil lamps, the making and maintaining of 
sewers. To meet the growing demands for conve- 
niences of one or other kind, speculative citizens uni- 
ted their means and risked large sums in the hope that 
while subserving public wants they might gain rather 
than lose. Gas-companies arose early in the century: 
and from them the town authorities bought gas for 
lighting the streets. Presently came water-compa- 
nies which on reservoirs, conduits, and distributing 
pipes, spent large sums. Thus town after town was 
greatly advantaged in pursuance of ordinary trade 
principles.* But in place of these private combina- 

* When reading socialist and collectivist writers, who ignore 
the evils which towns-people once suffered, and vilify men who, 
while seeking profits, achieved these great benefits for others, I 



REGIMENTATION. 193 

tions of men, investing their savings and looking for 
interest, as men at large do, we now have municipal 
organizations which are usurping these businesses one 
after another and entering upon more. By the cour- 
tesy of the Town-Clerk of Birmingham I have ob- 
tained details of the various administrations in that 
city. We may begin with the all-essential one — the 
police force, which contains 800 men of seven grades. 
^NText comes the public-works department, having 
eight divisions (including streets, trams, sewers and 
lighting), employing 1,726 men of fourteen denom- 
inations. In the water-supply administration we find 
469 officials bearing twenty-five different names, be- 
sides other officials in the new Elan works. In the 
gas-department, there are 2,845 employes divided 
into seven classes; and then comes the more recent 
electric supply system with 113 men of four grades. 
After these may be named the fire-brigade with 72 
men in five grades. The baths and parks divisions 
here follow with their 137 employes of eleven kinds. 

have sometimes thought I should like to thrust them all back into 
" the good old times " — times before decent roads had been made 
by turnpike trusts ; times when in London water from wells and 
conduits was eked out by water carried in leathern sacks over the 
backs of horses ; times when for lighting the streets people had 
to hang candles (? lanterns) out of their windows, and when, even 
much later, pleasure-seekers were shown their ways home at night 
by link-boys carrying torches. Six months' experience of the 
miseries borne might change their feelings towards the companies 
they now speak of as public enemies. 



194: REGIMENTATION. 

Then we have the department of markets and fairs 
employing 45 men of six kinds, and that of weights 
and measures employing 13 men of four kinds. 
There are three groups under the Health Committee, 
entitled " interception," " sanitary," and " hospitals," 
of which the first has 585 men of four grades in its 
pay, the next 75 men of five grades, and the last 
178 men and women of five grades. The several 
subdivisions of the estates administration (of which 
one concerns the law-courts) employ 109 people vari- 
ously distinguished. Following these may be set 
down the City-asylum and the lunatic-asylum, of 
which the one has 133 employes of eleven kinds and 
the other 111 employes of sixteen kinds. After the 
industrial school, which occupies 18 variously named 
officials, come the school of art with its branches, 
occupying 157, and the technical school occupying 
66: in each case variously classed. Last come the 
museum and the art-gallery employing 29 bearing 
various titles. Over all these preside the officials of 
the governing body, the town-clerk's department and 
the treasurer's department, the one with 15 and the 
other with 25 members of several grades. The entire 
organization includes 7,800, very soon to exceed 
8,000. Thus while there has been a replacing of 
joint-stock companies by municipal administrations, 
there have been developing many other administra- 
tions, undertaking other works. Each of these is, 



REGIMENTATION. 195 

as we see, like a military administration in having 
ranks subordinate one to another; and the aggregate 
of them reminds us of a series of companies united 
into regiments and brigades under a central com- 
mand. 

To Mr. William McBain who is familiar with the 
municipal government of Glasgow, and at the meet- 
ing of the British Association held there last year 
read a paper on the subject, I am indebted for the 
following brief account of the public organization of 
that city. The names of the divisions and their num- 
bers run thus: — -Headquarters, 60; police force, 
1,400; works-department (to which belongs the su- 
pervision of new and existing buildings, streets and 
drains), 600; lighting-department, 700; cleansing-de- 
partment, 600; city engineer and architect's depart- 
ment, 12; tramways, 3,500; water-supply, 527; gas, 
3,000; electricity, 1,200; telephones, 400; fire-bri- 
gade, 121; public parks, galleries, museums and hous- 
ing department, 300; baths and washing houses, — ; 
markets, bazaars, halls, and blocks, 150; city assessor's 
department, 40; health department, 700; libraries, 
100; labour bureau, 3; churches, — ; total, 13,413. 
In addition to the municipal administrations there 
are in both cases school-board authorities and paro- 
chial authorities with their staffs: the number of 
graded officials and employes under their control in 
Glasgow being 4,000. 



196 REGIMENTATION. 

As intimated above, regimentation is another as- 
pect of that general retrogression shown in growing 
imperialism and accompanying re-barbarization. 
Curious evidence of the way in which the one, like 
the other two, is carrying us back to medievalism, 
is furnished by the town-records of Beverley recently 
published. The various businesses were of course, 
after the general usage of the time, carried on by 
members of gilds, which, including certain minor 
ones, numbered at the end of the fifteenth century, 
twenty-three. These groups of merchants, traders, 
and artisans, down even to porters, severally had a 
warden or alderman with two assistants or stewards 
and with two searchers or inspectors; while the com- 
ponent master-traders or burgesses had journeymen 
and apprentices. These organized bodies were under 
the control of a town-government, originally the 
Twelve Keepers, elected by the burgesses or masters, 
and these, while carrying on civic business, exercised 
authority over the gild-members, inflicting fines for 
various offences and breaches of rules. That is to 
say, though having different ends, these bodies were 
analogous to our modern administrations in respect 
of their graduated structure, their subjection to mu- 
nicipal government, and their inspection by its offi- 
cers. 

!Not content with undertaking such businesses as 
those of joint-stock companies, our public agencies, 



REGIMENTATION. 197 

general and local, are beginning to enter upon retail 
trading. We have not yet gone so far as the French, 
who have made the sale, as well as the manufacture, 
of tobacco and matches and gunpowder into State- 
monopolies, and who have State-establishments for 
the making of fine porcelain and tapestries, but we 
are taking steps in the same direction. Most con- 
spicuous is municipal house-building. Over fifty 
years ago, and again in 1884, I pointed out that such 
enterprise is self-defeating, and recently Lord Ave- 
bury and Lord Eosebery have insisted on the same 
truth. But the public are now set upon it, and can 
no more be stopped by arguments and facts than a 
runaway horse can be stopped by pulling the reins. 
Other trades are being entered upon. The Liverpool 
Corporation sells sterilized milk for infants; and, ar- 
guing that it is proper to guard adults as well as 
infants from typhoid and tuberculosis, this sale of 
milk may be made general. The Corporation of Tun- 
bridge Wells is carrying on the business of hop-grow- 
ing — successfully, the town-clerk says; and it has set 
up a telephone system. At Torquay municipal farm- 
ing has gone to the extent of making a profit from 
rabbits on its 2,200 acres of land, and feeding sheep 
instead of letting the grass to outsiders. Each step 
renders subsequent steps easier. Some three years 
or more ago a deputation to the London County 
Council advocated a system of municipal bakeries; 



198 REGIMENTATION. 

and there are signs that we may presently have in- 
toxicating liquors sold by public agency: the Gothen- 
burg system and the vodka-monopoly in Russia fur- 
nishing precedents. When Collectivism has strength- 
ened itself enough, there may come municipal gro- 
ceries, and so on with other trades, until at length 
manufacturers and distributors are formed into mul- 
titudinous departments, each with its head and its 
ranks of subordinates and workers — regiments and 
brigades. In France, beyond the fighting army, the 
army of civil servants, ever increasing, has reached 
nearly 900,000, and when all our businesses have 
been municipalized, a larger number will have been 
reached here. 

Meanwhile the same process is going on among 
artisans and others united into trade-unions. Made 
somewhat different from one another by adjustments 
to different occupations, they nevertheless show com- 
munity in the division of their members into various 
ranks — master-workmen, labourers, apprentices. As 
of old in the gilds, there is a narrow limit to appren- 
ticeships, and there are barriers against the rising 
of workers of a lower rank into those of a higher. 
There are rigid rules, and spies to detect breaches 
of them. There are governing committees before 
which transgressing members are called, and by which 
heavy penalties for disobedience are imposed. Be- 
yond these there are the penalties of expulsion and 



REGIMENTATION. 199 

consequent persecution when seeking employment. 
The local groups in each trade are subject to a cen- 
tral body partially controlling them; and there have 
been attempts to unite all the trades. So that the 
general principles of regimentation are displayed 
throughout. The whole organization is regarded as 
the workers' army; and the assertion has been made 
that in the conflict with masters the usages of war 
are justifiable. 

Lastly let us note that this regimentation, now 
conspicuous in private organizations as in public ones, 
illustrates the concomitance between exercise of coer- 
cion and submission to coercion. The men who, pur- 
suing what they think their trade-interests, trample 
on other men's freedom, surrender their own freedom 
while doing it. The members of a trade-union who 
assault non-unionists for offering to work on lower 
terms than themselves, thus denying their liberty of 
contract, have themselves yielded up their liberty of 
contract to the majority of their fellows and its gov- 
erning body. "While relinquishing their own rights 
to make the best of their own powers, they prevent 
outsiders from exercising similar rights, and stigma- 
tize as a " blackleg," that is, a swindler, the man who 
insists on making his own bargains. ^N"ay, they do 
more. Their leaders have applauded the Boer Gov- 
ernment because it "protected the strikers but re- 
fused police protection for l blacklegs.' " Already 



200 REGIMENTATION. 

these men have made themselves semi-slaves to their 
trade-combinations, and with the further progress 
of imperialism, re-barbarization, and regimentation, 
their semi-slavery will end in complete slavery — a 
state which they will fully deserve. 



WEATHER FOEECASTS. 

"Ah, it's too bright to last! " is an exclamation 
not unfrequently heard on a fine morning. Ill-based 
as are many common beliefs abont the weather, a few 
are well-based, and this is one of them : little as those 
who utter it understand why. 

A specially fine morning is nearly always the end 
of a fine night, that is, a night throughout all or 
most of which the sky has been free from clouds. 
During such a night the Earth's surface radiates its 
heat into space without impediment. There is no 
canopy of opaque vapour floating above, which radi- 
ates back to the Earth much of the heat which it 
receives from it. Hence, during the early part of the 
following day, before the sun is high, a low tem- 
perature is reached, alike by the exposed parts of the 
ground and by parts clothed with vegetation, as is 
shown by the large deposits of dew. The chilled sur- 
face is now a good condenser, and if the air is well 
charged with water, as commonly it is when the wind 
is westerly, and especially southwesterly, precipita- 
tion results : clouds begin to form and presently there 
14 201 



202 WEATHER FORECASTS. 

comes rain. If the air is not much charged with 
water, as when it comes from the east, north-east, or 
north, the probability of rain is much less; but there 
may not unlikely ensue a cloudy day. By way of 
impressing this relation of facts I have sometimes 
expressed it facetiously thus: — When the Earth 
throws off its blanket at night it takes cold and cries 
in the morning. 

Thus much by way of introduction. Let me pass 
now to the larger topic on which I would dilate — the 
relation between the kind of weather and the tem- 
perature of the Earth's surface, as illustrated in some 
cases permanently and in other cases temporarily. 

Permanent illustrations we have first of all in 
the desert of Sahara and like rainless regions, where 
the temperature of the surface is so high that pre- 
cipitation is prevented: the radiant heat dissipating 
all arriving clouds. A vicious circle is established. 
Clouds cannot exist over the hot sand, and in the ab- 
sence of rain and subsequent evaporation the sand 
cannot be cooled. A converse relation of phenomena 
is seen in mountainous regions. Having above them 
smaller depths of air, elevated surfaces are colder 
than the surfaces of valleys, and, being colder, bring 
down water more readily. By storms, and by subse- 
quent evaporation, they are continually chilled, and 
therefore tend to condense more rain, or, as in Alpine 
regions, snow. Here we have a vicious circle of the 



WEATHER FORECASTS. 203 

opposite kind : from coldness of the surface come fre- 
quent precipitations, and these maintain the coldness 
of the surface. 

That which holds permanently in these extreme 
cases must hold temporarily in less extreme cases- — 
cases in which the surface, made in one way or other 
colder or warmer than usual, produces a greater or 
less tendency to rain than usual : a cause of rain which 
co-operates with other causes or conflicts with them. 
For the last twenty years I have occasionally noted 
this connexion of facts, and have several times dis- 
cussed it with a friend who is, or was, concerned with 
the predictions of the Meteorological Office. In pur- 
suance of our discussions I wrote to him from Dorking 
on July 20, 1888, a letter from which the following 
is an extract : — 

Certainly two years ago — it may be three — I drew your 
attention to the temperature of the Earth as extending to 
a certain depth below the surface, as a factor in meteor- 
ology : arguing that when this superficial layer is colder than 
usual, it is a more efficient condenser and conduces to rainy 
weather. 

You did not think anything of the suggestion, but I now 
draw your attention to our recent weather in illustration of my 
belief. The long cold spring, continuing on into summer, has 
so chilled the surface of the country that now, no matter what 
way the wind, cloud condenses every day and rain comes: 
there having been established, as in all such cases, a vicious 
circle — cold surface produces cloud, cloud prevents the warm- 
ing of the surface ; and when a certain stage has been reached 
there i3 no remedy save from some larger cycle of changes in- 
itiated elsewhere. 



204 WEATHER FORECASTS. 

Then on March 8 of the next year, 1889, I wrote 
again as follows: — 

When, on Wednesday morning, the wind chaDged accord- 
ing to forecast to S. and S.W., I made the remark — "Now we 
shall most likely have a great deal of rain, as the southerly and 
south-westerly winds will have to pass over a surface which has 
been chilled by a fortnight of frost and snow." 

Some hours afterwards there came the evening paper of 
Wednesday in which there was the following forecast for the 
next day up to mid-day : — 

[the extract was sent and is missing]. 
So, again, the next morning the forecast was : — 
[this extract too was sent]. 

Thus it appears that no rain was anticipated until mid-day 
on Thursday, and that after that time the amount of rain an- 
ticipated was but small. 

Now the facts have been very much at variance with these 
anticipations. The rain commenced 12 hours before the time 
when it was anticipated, viz., in the middle of the night on 
Wednesday, and here it has rained incessantly for more than 30 
hours. 

Here, then, I take it is a case in which the forecasts are 
wrong in taking no account of the temperature of the surface 
over which the wind passes. Last summer, as I pointed out to 
you, exemplified the general and continued effect of a surface 
chilled to a considerable depth by the long-continued cold and 
rain of the spring; and this case exemplifies the special and 
probably temporary effect of a surface greatly chilled but 
probably to a small depth. 

In your reply last autumn you implied that my belief was 
that the temperature of the surface was the chief factor. I 
never said any such thing and never dreamed any such thing. 
I never supposed that it was anything like a chief factor, but 
merely alleged that it was a factor which should be taken into 
account, and that under some conditions it just serves to turn 
the balance. 



WEATHER FORECASTS. 205 

Before these dates and since, I have noted various 
facts respecting cloud-formation which serve in sun- 
dry ways to verify the belief above expressed. Dur- 
ing one of the many autumn visits spent with my 
friends at Ardtornish (a new house at the head of 
Loch Aline, to which they gave a name adopted for 
the adjacent Ardtornish Castle on the Sound of Mull) 
I one day observed from this point of view, looking 
along the two and a half miles of Loch Aline to the 
Sound, that over the line of the Sound the clouds 
were thin. Over the mountains of Mull on the one 
side and the highlands of Morven on the other, the 
clouds were dark, that is, thick; whereas over the 
water of the Sound separating the two, the canopy 
of cloud was relatively light: the fact being, I pre- 
sume, that the water in the Sound radiated more 
heat than did the surfaces of the hills on either side. 
A different kind of evidence occurred on another 
occasion. While we were yachting up the Sleat 
Sound there came into view the island of Rum with 
its three mountain peaks. The day was clear, but 
over each of these peaks, some two or three hundred 
feet it may be above it, there was a solitary cloud,, 
The appearance was at once curious and instructive. 
Adjacency to the cold surface of each peak, which 
was radiating little heat into space, established the 
conditions leading to condensation of vapour from the 
warmer air which drifted over the spot. More re- 



206 WEATHER FORECASTS. 

markable in appearance than the common cases in 
which a cloud continues to envelope the top of a 
mountain notwithstanding a breeze apparently strong 
enough to blow it away, were these three cases in 
which a cloud was detached but remained seemingly 
stationary above. Evidently the explanation in such 
cases is that the cloud is not really stationary, but 
that while on the leeward side the portions continu- 
ally drifted away are forthwith dissolved, on the 
windward side other portions are formed from the 
wind continually arriving. 

Here, in the South of England, evidences of other 
kinds have from time to time struck me. I may 
name, first, two instances of effects the converse of 
that described in the above-quoted letter as occurring 
in 1888, when a cold wet spring was followed by a 
cold wet summer. One of these instances was, I 
think, in 1893, when a warm and very dry spring was 
followed by a summer of drought; and the other was 
this year (1901), when, though to a less marked de- 
gree, a like sequence happened: both of these cases 
tending to show the state which results when the su- 
perficial layer of the Earth becomes warmer than 
usual. While spending last summer (1900) at Bep- 
ton, under the western end of the South Downs, I 
observed several examples of the influence which the 
high lands behind had upon the formation of cloud. 
On one occasion, at some height above the tops of 



WEATHER FORECASTS. 207 

the Downs, there extended as far as the eye could 
reach a canopy of cloud of the nimbus type. This 
canopy spread some distance towards the north, while 
further to the north there was a summer sky. This 
year (1901) at Petworth I observed a converse phe- 
nomenon. The weather was very hot, but over the 
comparatively cool surfaces of Blackdown and Hind 
Head some fleecy clouds had been formed. Drifting 
southwards these presently came over the valley of 
the Eother and then gradually dissolved: being dissi- 
pated by the radiated heat. 

But the most striking support of my belief I have 
observed in the space between Brighton and Port- 
slade. From the beach a level tract extends inland. 
On each occasion there was fine weather to seaward 
— a summer sky with a few drifting clouds, wafted 
by a gentle south-west breeze. The air remained 
clear for some distance inland from the shore, but 
at half a mile off or thereabouts there began to con- 
dense, at a hundred or more feet above the surface, 
a thin veil of cloud. This, being continually drifted 
away, thickened as it passed on, while a new portion 
of the thin veil was formed in its place, until, on 
looking landwards, one saw that a mile or two to the 
north a cloud-canopy covered the country. Two facts 
were here conspicuous. The first was that the air 
was made to condense its contained water by passing 
over a surface colder than that which it had previ- 



208 WEATHER FORECASTS. 

ously been passing over. The second was that un- 
der conditions like those exemplified, a very slight 
difference of surface-temperature might presently 
produce a large effect by shutting out the source of 
heat. Clearly, if the inland tract described had been 
a little warmer, and had not caused the condensation 
which formed a cloud-canopy, the country to the 
north, remaining exposed to the sun, would have had 
no tendency to form cloud and precipitate rain; 
whereas the canopy of cloud, by intercepting the 
sun's rays and keeping the surface relatively cold, 
made more probable the continuance of cloudy and 
rainy weather. When forces are nearly balanced the 
addition of a small amount to one or the other may 
cause a great and continued change. 

It seems to me that we have here " a true cause " 
of variations in weather. The only question is to 
what extent it qualifies the effects of larger causes. 
It is undeniable that the permanently dry regions and 
the permanently wet regions exhibit the relation al- 
leged, and it can hardly be denied that between these 
extreme cases there must be multitudinous grada- 
tions of cases in which minor effects are produced. 
"Whether this factor can be so taken into account 
as appreciably to affect forecasts may be doubted. 
It has occurred to me, however, that if stations were 
distributed with adequate frequency over the king- 
dom, each of which, duly fenced while duly exposed, 



WEATHER FORECASTS. 209 

contained thermometers the bulbs of which were in- 
serted in the ground to several depths, say three, six, 
nine, and twelve inches, or more, it would be possi- 
ble, by comparing the records of temperatures ex- 
tending over years and over months, to judge whether 
there would be an increased or a decreased tendency 
to the rainy weather, or the fine weather, mainly 
brought about by other causes. But I throw this out 
merely as a suggestion. 



THE KEGKESSIVE MULTIPLICATION 
OF CAUSES. 

An ancestral tree is a familiar object — familiar 
because the desire to trace descent from some note- 
worthy person often prompts delineation of it. But 
no one draws up a converse ancestral tree — a tree 
representing all the ancestors of each preceding gen- 
eration, multiplying as they recede: the four grand- 
parents, the eight great-grandparents, the sixteen 
great-great-grandparents, the thirty-two, &c. ; nearly 
all of them commonplace or obscure persons, descent 
from whom confers no distinction. Habitually ignor- 
ing the fact though he does, everyone is aware that 
of those men and women who form his own converse 
ancestral tree, branching and re-branching as it goes 
back in time, each gave a part of the constitution 
now possessed by him — each was a cause of multitu- 
dinous traits, most of them hidden, some unobtrusive, 
and a few conspicuous, as atavism occasionally proves. 
Though equality of influence cannot be alleged of 
all the members composing each receding generation, 
yet the exercise of some influence is undeniable. No 
one's nature would be the same were the share taken 
210 



THE REGRESSIVE MULTIPLICATION OF CAUSES. 211 

in forming it by any ancestor replaced by some other ; 
and as the number of ancestors in each receding gen- 
eration becomes greater, checked only by increasing 
coalescence of lines of ancestry, we see that the re- 
gressive multiplication of causes is exemplified in 
each person. 

On looking into the matter more closely, we may 
observe that each of these causes was itself a com- 
plex cause, not only in the sense that each ancestor 
was an involved aggregate of structures and func- 
tions, but in the sense that each became a cause only 
by the aid of numerous co-operative causes — inci- 
dents, conditions, or antecedents, we must call them; 
since they were not themselves operative forces, but 
by their presence or absence allowed certain other 
forces to operate. If a certain ancestor and ancestress 
had been of different creeds; if one or both had had 
no property; if the lady had not recovered from 
small-pox without bearing marks; if illness had pre- 
vented one of them from attending a certain social 
gathering, or the other had been called away by busi- 
ness; or if some more attractive man had not been 
absent; and so on, and so on; the courtship would 
not have been initiated, the marriage would not have 
taken place, and there would not have been the child 
through whom the descent is traced. Moreover it is 
obvious that each of these co-operative antecedents 
itself depended on various other antecedents; so that, 



212 THE REGRESSIVE MULTIPLICATION OF CAUSES. 

taking into account the innumerable causes implied 
by the innumerable marriages, there were practically 
infinite numbers of antecedents, every one of which 
exercised an influence over the result as seen in the 
now-existing descendant. 

I have taken first this regressive multiplication 
of causes exhibited in the organic world, as being 
easy to follow. I pass now to the multitudinous cases, 
less easy to follow, exhibited by the inorganic world ; 
for, commonly ignoring the fact though we do, each 
inorganic cause has an ancestry of inorganic causes, 
similarly multiplying as it recedes in time. This 
sandy beach bounded above by a bank of stones, af- 
fords good illustrations. A rill of water draining 
out of the shingle bank, runs over the sand, cutting 
a serpentine course, here shallow and outspread and 
there undercutting one side of its narrower channel. 
A pebble lying above the undermined side has fallen 
in. Look a little higher up, and you see that this 
minute streamlet has been deflected towards the un- 
dermined side by a large irregular boulder, the shape 
of which determined the course of the water. If you 
inquire for their antecedents you see that the irregu- 
larities of the boulder, due first to its heterogeneous 
composition, imply an infinity of processes that went 
on in geologic times, and also recall those actions of 
the breakers which have since rounded its prominent 
parts. Pursuing back a further line of causation you 



THE REGRESSIVE MULTIPLICATION OF CAUSES. 213 

are shown that this boulder rolled down to its present 
place from the top edge of the shingle-bank, where 
it had been landed by a breaker at the last tide; and 
you are introduced to the countless causes which 
brought that boulder to the needful preceding place 
and to the forces which shaped the breaker that 
lodged it in its position: in both cases innumerable 
energies co-operating. Yet another retrogression 
brings you to that vibration produced in the adjacent 
road by a passing waggon, which shook the boulder 
from its place; then you have the complex group of 
antecedents implied by passage of the waggon; and 
so on perpetually. Thus is it with each of the appar- 
ently simple causes we see in operation. Always it is 
a composite cause; and each of the causes composing 
it is a composite cause. Shooting over a ledge of 
rock a small waterfall exhibits a force which seems 
one and homogeneous — a cause of change which we 
think of as simple. But if we trace back the stream 
we find that in it are united numerous streamlets, 
each of which is formed of many rills that severally 
drain away the water from surrounding herbage, and 
also convey the products of springs. A further re- 
cession brings us to the storms and the showers oc- 
curring at intervals, each presenting innumerable 
gravitating rain-drops. These, again, descend from 
clouds which have been drifting and eddying on their 
way from the Atlantic seaboard; and a thousand or 



214 THE REGRESSIVE MULTIPLICATION OF CAUSES. 

more miles off the molecules forming these clouds 
were evaporated from ocean-surfaces too wide and 
various to conceive. So that the forces exercised by 
the mass of molecules in the waterfall have had ante- 
cedents branching and re-branching to an unimagina- 
ble degree as they are traced back. 

When studying the cosmic process we are prone 
to look in advance. We watch the changes now tak- 
ing place and think of those which will presently take 
place. When contemplating a force tacitly assumed 
to be simple, we observe how, falling on any aggre- 
gate, the effects it produces are perpetually multi- 
plied, how there go on corresponding differentiations 
of structure, while the original force and its derived 
forces are themselves differentiated; and we observe 
how, under certain conditions, there go on integra- 
tions of structure and corresponding integrations of 
forces. But rightly to conceive the cosmic process 
we must give equal attention to the fact that through- 
out the past there have been perpetual differentia- 
tions of matters and of forces, and that under some 
conditions there have been perpetual integrations of 
matters and of forces: the result being that the fac- 
tors of the cosmic process immediately within our 
ken, have histories in the past approximately as com- 
plex as are the histories which will result from them 
in the future. Continually in our analyses and syn- 
theses we begin with Here and Now; whereas in the 



THE REGRESSIVE MULTIPLICATION OF CAUSES. 215 

totality of things there is no Here and no JSTow, but 
only a momentary aspect of a transformation which, 
though in the course of immeasurable time becoming 
more involved, is approximately as involved in the 
immediate past as it will be in the immediate future 
— in the totality of things I say, because in things 
taken separately it is otherwise. Hence we have to 
regard each cause we see in operation as resulting 
from an integration of causes, or rather of forces, 
conditions, antecedents, becoming more complex with 
each step of retrogression, carrying us back to an 
infinite complexity. 

To many readers it will be manifest that the fore- 
going paragraphs, duly elaborated, should have 
formed a chapter in First Principles. More than a 
year ago I issued the sixth edition of that work, re- 
vised up to date : conceiving it then, as I conceive it 
now, to be the final edition; for it is not likely that 
the whole of it will be sold before my death. Thus 
no opportunity is likely to occur for incorporating 
what I have recently discovered should have been 
set forth as part of the general doctrine contained 
in that work; and I have therefore no alternative 
but to include a brief exposition of it in this mis- 
cellaneous volume. 



SANITATION IN THEORY AND 
PRACTICE. 

After lying unused for nearly fifty years, an 
almost forgotten incident will serve to introduce 
some comments on the doings of our guardians of 
the public health. It occurred at a little dinner given 
by a friend, long since deceased without leaving de- 
scendants, Mr. E. O. Ward, active in the sanitary 
agitation then carried on, and, I believe, a writer of 
occasional leaders on water-supply and other such 
matters in The Times. He was an enthusiast and 
soon found occasion to bring up his favourite topic. 
The form his talk took was an unstinted laudation 
of his friend Edwin Chadwick, the leader of the move- 
ment; and the particular trait singled out for praise 
was his perseverance in carrying out vast investiga- 
tions. One illustration given was that if he needed 
proof of some point in his case, he instructed a man 
to examine and report, and if the man did not bring 
back the evidence he desired, he sent him about his 
business and dispatched another; meting out like 
measure to him too, if he failed to furnish state- 
ments of the required kind; and so on, and so on, 
216 



SANITATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. 217 

until he got the proof he wanted. All this was said 
with apparent unconsciousness of the damaging im- 
plications respecting Blue Books — the disclosure of 
the way in which a strong case is made out by omit- 
ting facts which do not support the foregone con- 
clusion. Twice since that time I have had occasion 
to look into these masses of officially-collected evi- 
dence, and in both cases have seen how the bias of 
those concerned has vitiated the conclusions drawn. 
Among those now living few remember how, in 
the early fifties there was widely disseminated the 
idea, naturally arising and readily accepted, that 
fevers of one or other kind are produced by noisome 
odours — stinks and stenches. What proposition 
seemed more reasonable than that the repulsive 
smells arising from decomposing matter carried with 
them the germs of diseases, or else that the smells 
themselves were the causes of diseases? Slums and 
their surroundings, where epidemics arose, were 
commonly characterized by malodours proceeding 
from dirt, from refuse-heaps, and from obstructed 
drains. "Was not the explanation obvious? After 
the usual style of reasoning, which proceeds by the 
method of agreement unchecked by the method of 
difference, it was concluded that as these two things 
habitually went together, the one was the cause of 
the other. It was not asked whether these places 

where disease was rife were not also places inhabited 
15 



218 SANITATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. 

by people leading unhealthy lives — drunkards, pros- 
titutes, beggars, and half-starved men and women, 
who were, in consequence of their modes of life, 
their bad feeding and over-crowding, on the high- 
way to death. It was not asked whether the dis- 
eases were not due to these causes rather than to 
the smells. The verdicts of the nostrils were wil- 
lingly assumed to be verified by statistics. 

And yet the counter-evidence was overwhelming. 
In every village throughout the kingdom, each of 
the half-dozen farms, by its yard full of manure, by 
its cow-sheds, and by its stables, severally reeking 
with the gases from decomposing matter, furnished 
a contradiction to the belief that ordinary unpleas- 
ant odours are pernicious. Places which, according 
to current sanitary doctrines, ought to be centres of 
disease, prove to be quite healthful — so healthful, 
indeed, that invalids frequently take lodgings in 
farm-houses where they are exposed to these prod- 
ucts of decaying excreta. Nor need we go to the 
country for disproofs. They are supplied by all the 
stables in great towns — stables in which grooms, 
ostlers, and others, spend great parts of their lives, 
and over which in many cases families reside. Nay, 
London affords a still more conspicuous contradic- 
tion. Throughout the hottest months of the year 
the horse-dung scattered over the streets is perpetu- 
ally ground down by carriage wheels, occasionally 



SANITATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. 219 

sprinkled by water-carts, and shone on by the July 
or August sun: the disgusting odour emitted in hot 
weather yielding ample proof of the decomposition 
taking place in every thoroughfare. What is the 
result? None, so far as the Bills of Mortality tell 
us. The deaths per thousand are not higher in num- 
ber at that time than at other times, and are, indeed, 
occasionally lower than at this salubrious place, 
Brighton. Once more, personal observation has 
supplied me with a yet more striking disproof of the 
notion that was established by garbled evidence in 
past years. Visits frequently paid in the autumn 
to certain delightful friends, who at that season 
migrate from London to their estate on the western 
coast of Scotland, repeatedly obliged me to go by 
steamer down the Clyde, sometimes in July some- 
times in August; and on more occasions than one I 
have been compelled, during part of the passage be- 
tween Glasgow and Greenock, to hold my handker- 
chief to my nose so as to minimize my perception of 
the abominable smell given off from the drainage 
of Glasgow poured into the river. E"ow all along 
its banks are ship-yards where thousands of men saw 
and hammer all day long, and had this stench been 
the fever-breeding agent which we are led to sup- 
pose, these men ought to have been swept away 
wholesale. Yet there were no statements of un- 
usual mortality among them. 



220 SANITATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. 

But now, accepting for a moment these doctrines 
which we have been industriously taught, let us see 
what have been the measures taken in pursuance of 
them. It was found that ordinary soil is a good dis- 
infectant, and that effete matters mixed with it, 
while having their disagreeable odours destroyed, 
increase its fertility. "What was the inference? 
Evidently that if sewage was properly distributed 
over areas of land, it would lose that disease-produc- 
ing quality associated with its noisomeness, at the 
same time that the crops would be increased. Sew- 
age farms resulted from this inference. It was for- 
gotten that the disinfecting power of soil is de- 
pendent on its ability to absorb the matters mixed 
with it or poured over it, and that as soon as it be- 
comes saturated it loses its disinfecting power. This 
conclusion, obvious one would have thought even to 
the uninstructed, was not drawn by those in author- 
ity. The result was that the irrigated lands became 
widespread sources of these gases we have been 
taught to dread. Along with cases of which I have 
read, one case has come under my personal notice. 
Friends of mine living some four miles from a sew- 
age farm, were so much annoyed by the repulsive 
odours frequently wafted from it, that they had 
thoughts of leaving their house. Of course the nui- 
sance suffered by them was suffered still more by 
hosts of people in nearer places, according as the 



SANITATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. 221 

wind brought the foul gas over them or carried it 
elsewhere. And this wide diffusion of noisome 
effluvia, said in other cases to be productive of dis- 
ease, went on until the town of Burton had to spend 
a large sum in partially deodorizing the sewage be- 
fore distributing it. 

But now observe what have simultaneously been 
the measures taken in towns to exclude the mischiefs 
ascribed to foul gases. The ventilation of sewers 
has been insisted upon as a needful prophylactic, 
and nowadays one sees galvanized iron pipes, dis- 
figuring the sides of buildings, arranged for carrying 
away those products of decomposition which, by the 
sewage-farms, are spread abroad for people to 
breathe. That which, in small quantity, is injuri- 
ous in the one place is, in large quantity, innocuous 
in the other! Nay, this is not all. Where altera- 
tions in the drainage of houses are made, and where, 
by consequence, certain old drains are cut off as 
useless, it is common to require that these shall be 
destroyed. Though very shortly there will be noth- 
ing left in them to decompose, and though, during 
the interval, any escaping gas must pass through six, 
eight, or more feet of that soil said to be so effective 
as a disinfectant, they must be made away with! 
Truly the ancient figure of straining at a gnat and 
swallowing a camel is utterly inadequate to express 
the folly of these proceedings. 



222 SANITATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. 

How is it that beliefs so conspicuously fallacious 
have been established and are maintained by cen- 
tral and local authorities and their employes? There 
has developed a bureaucracy which has an interest in 
keeping up these delusions; and the members of 
which, individually, have interests in insisting upon 
these needless expenditures. Every organized body 
of men tends to grow, and tends to magnify its own 
importance. For the last half-century the military 
class has been raising an outcry about our defence- 
lessness, notwithstanding successive additions to the 
army. Continually there have been urgent de- 
mands from admirals and captains that our navy 
shall be increased; and when it has been increased 
there have been demands for further increases. 
Similarly with the State-Church. Under the plea 
of " spiritual destitution " the erection of more 
churches has been urged by unbeneficed clergy, and 
then incomes for incumbents have been asked. And 
under kindred influences the sanitary class, which 
has grown up since Chadwick's day, ever exaggerates 
the evils to be dealt with while tacitly exalting its 
own members. A surveyor employed by a public 
body has to prove himself a vigilant man, and he 
does this by finding fault wherever there is a possi- 
ble occasion — has, in fact, no other way of getting a 
reputation. So, too, if an in-coming tenant engages 
a surveyor, he chooses one recommended as experi- 



SANITATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. 223 

enced and careful, and one having this character has 
obtained it by exaggerating defects and insisting on 
needless changes. A man who frequently reports 
that nothing needs doing is looked at sceptically, as a 
doctor is looked at when he prescribes no medicine. 

Yet another cause co-operates. New sanitary 
appliances are continually being devised, sanctioned 
by authority, and required by surveyors; and sur- 
veyors may have, and certainly sometimes do have, 
personal interests in pushing the use of them : either 
as being shareholders in the companies they are 
manufactured by, or as receiving percentages on the 
numbers sold through their recommendation. In 
these days when illegitimate commissions are being 
disclosed, it is folly to suppose that here, where 
there is an obvious method of obtaining secret 
profits, it will not be used. 

"But what does it matter?" will be exclaimed 
by some random readers. " It simply entails extra 
costs on landlords or on classes of tenants who can 
well bear them." Here is a sample of those vicious 
ways of thinking common in social affairs. As far 
back as 1850 I pointed out the evils entailed by 
artificially raising the costs of houses, and since then 
(see The Man versus The State, pp. 51-5) I have 
given definite proof that the multiplication of sani- 
tary requirements often arrests the building of small 
houses. 



224 SANITATION IN THEORY AND PRACTICE. 

And then comes a further mischief. As a se- 
quence of this law-made deficiency of house-accom- 
modation, there has been growing louder a com- 
plaint about the " houseless poor," with frequent 
newspaper articles on " The Housing Problem " ; 
tacitly assuming that it is a public business to supply 
people with fit abodes. For equally valid reasons 
there may by-and-by be agitated the " food prob- 
lem," and then the " clothing problem "; whereupon 
socialism will be achieved. 

Of course the foregoing paragraphs must not be 
regarded as a condemnation of all sanitary adminis- 
tration. Public control of individuals is needful in 
the sphere of hygiene as in other spheres; for com- 
mission of a nuisance is an aggression on neighbours 
or on the public at large. In a town, care of the 
roads and pavements must obviously be undertaken 
by a public authority, as also sewage (though Chel- 
tenham, before its incorporation, was drained by a 
company). Doubtless it is difficult to draw the line. 
But the absurdities and abuses, as well as the in- 
direct restraints on house-building, which I have 
pointed out, furnish reasons for holding in check the 
sanitary bureaucracy and closely criticizing its rep- 
resentations. 



GYMNASTICS. 

Some year or two ago, in Harper's Magazine 
("unfortunately I did not note the date) I read the 
judgment of an expert which confirmed that ill- 
opinion of gymnastics I have long entertained. It 
was contained in an essay entitled " Non-Hygienic 
Gymnastics/' by Mr. Richard Buckham, who quoted 
as follows from " a well-known teacher of physical 
development " in New York: — 

" I have no hesitation in saying that our systems of athletic 
training, at least the most of those now in vogue, are not only 
vicious in principle, but tend to break down the system, shorten 
life, and generally do more harm than good. I have made a 
study of the subject for many years, and I long ago began to 
inquire why it is that so-called athletes usually die young, or 
are not nearly so vigorous at forty-five or fifty as the man who 
has rigorously neglected any sort of training, and perhaps even 
exercise. That such is the fact there is no room for doubt. 
Athletes do die young. I do not mean by all this that I do not 
regard athletic sport of various kinds as healthy and valuable. 
On the contrary, I do, just as long as they are pleasurable, and 
are play and not work. But when your young athlete begins 
to train for a rowing contest or for the football team, or for 
anything like that, he is going to an excess, and that is just as 
bad as excess in any other way — in business, in mental labor, 
or in anything else. And the chances are that he will exhaust 
his system, come out with a weak heart or some other trouble, 
and be physically damaged for the remainder of his life. What 

225 



226 GYMNASTICS. 

the man of to-day needs most is not athletics in a gymnasium, 
but plenty of fresh air in his lungs. Instead of a quantity of 
violent exercise that leaves him weak for several hours after- 
ward, he needs to learn to breathe right, stand right, and sit 
right." 

Belief in the virtues of gymnastics, widespread 
and indeed almost universal, embodies several grave 
errors. The first to be here commented upon is the 
identification of muscular strength with constitu- 
tional strength. It is assumed that one who can 
lift great weights, jump great heights, or run great 
distances, is proved by these abilities to be fitted for 
withstanding the strains of life — doing hard work, 
bearing unfavourable conditions, and so on. The 
inference is erroneous. Darwin described the 
dwarfish Fuegians as being so degraded in appear- 
ance as scarcely to look like human beings; and yet 
he tells us that they could with impunity let the 
snow fall and melt upon their naked skins. A dis- 
turbance of the constitutional balance which would 
be fatal to a European was to them innocuous. Sim- 
ilarly with animals. It is recognized by breeders 
that the small unimproved French breeds are more 
hardy than the large improved English breeds. 
Muscularity and the putting out of great mechanical 
force, are no measures of strength in that sense of 
the word which chiefly concerns men. Such power 
of limb as results from the daily activities of boy- 
hood — say the ability, even in early youth, to walk 



GYMNASTICS. 227 

more than forty miles in a day (I speak from per- 
sonal experience) — is quite enough in preparation 
for the contingencies of ordinary life, and of life 
deviating a good deal from the ordinary. 

Not only is there error in assuming that increase 
of muscular power and increase of general vigour 
necessarily go together, but there is error in assum- 
ing that the reverse connexion cannot hold. It is 
taken for granted that general vigour, if not in- 
creased, is at any rate not decreased. But this is 
untrue. There are obvious physiological reasons 
for the injurious results testified to by the expert 
quoted above. The current belief takes no account 
of cost. It is supposed that certain sets of muscles 
can be greatly developed without the system at large 
being so taxed as to cause mischief. But when it is 
remembered that the alimentary organs have but 
a limited ability, and that the blood they furnish 
has to serve for all purposes, it will be understood 
that you cannot greatly develop certain large ex- 
ternal parts without appreciably drawing upon the 
supplies needed for repair and growth of other ex- 
ternal parts, and also of those internal parts which 
carry on the life; and that therefore the abnormal 
powers acquired by gymnasts may be at the cost of 
constitutional deterioration. 

There has to be added the further great mistake 
that it matters not whether exercise is pleasurable 



228 GYMNASTICS. 

or otherwise. The current conception is that, given 
a certain amount of muscular activity gone through, 
the beneficial effect is the same if, instead of an 
accompanying gratification, there is an accompany- 
ing indifference, or even that partial pain which 
great strain implies. Again we meet with a physio- 
logical blunder. Every medical man has daily proof 
that an agreeable state of feeling goes a long way 
towards curing illness; and there is scarcely a house- 
hold in which all members have not from time 
to time seen illustrations of this truth. Yet there 
seems a refusal to draw the inference that if pleas- 
ure is beneficial to an invalid, so also is it to a per- 
son in health. In him the effect is not conspicuous, 
but it is there. As certain as it is that a country 
walk through fine scenery is more invigorating than 
an equal number of steps up and down a hall; so 
certain is it that the muscular activity of a game, 
accompanied by the ordinary exhilaration, invigor- 
ates more than the same amount of muscular ac- 
tivity in the shape of gymnastics. 

Underneath these errors lies the vicious concep- 
tion which pervades the thoughts of teachers at 
large. Culture, no matter of what kind, must take 
the shape of tasks. In the minds of most people 
education and pleasure are mutually exclusive ideas. 
Disagreeable strain is regarded as necessarily accom- 
panying mental development; and we here see that 



GYMNASTICS. 229 

the same connexion of thoughts is extended to bodily 
development: this must be achieved by the disa- 
greeable muscular strains constituting gymnastics. 
Moreover, throughout we are shown the ingrained 
faith in coercion. Pupil and master are correla- 
tives; and the master is conceived as one who exer- 
cises such force as he deems needful. Nowadays 
the coercive relation, once marked enough, is fading ; 
but the dominant idea in the pupil's mind continues 
to be fulfilment of the master's will, rather than ac- 
quisition of knowledge and mental power. And if 
in the bodily culture known as gymnastics, the mas- 
tery of the instructor is no longer conspicuous (save 
in Germany), yet here also there survives the 
thought of fulfilling requirements and of subjection 
to the demands of the system. 

Alike among early civilized races and among bar- 
barians, war originated gymnastics; and the theory 
and practice of gymnastics have all along remained 
congruous with the militant type of society: witness 
the present state of Germany. The endurance of 
painful efforts and the disregard of pleasure, have 
had their appropriateness to social states in which 
bodily prowess was of chief importance ; and a phys- 
ical discipline, pushed even to the extent of an ear- 
lier break-up of the constitution, was not without a 
good political defence. But with the advance to- 
wards a peaceful state of society, the need for mak- 



230 GYMNASTICS. 

ing strength of limb a chief qualification in the citi- 
zen diminishes, and along with its diminution, co- 
ercive and ascetic culture loses its fitness. In place 
of artificial appliances for bodily development come 
the natural appliances furnished by games and spon- 
taneous exercises. 



EUTHANASIA. 

Theough many years, personal experiences have 
drawn my attention to the effect of attitude on the 
cerebral circulation, and something like a decade ago 
my thoughts passed from the effect of attitude to 
the effect of motion. It occurred to me that by cen- 
trifugal force the cerebral circulation might easily 
be regulated: now increase in the supply of blood 
to the brain being produced and now decrease. Sup- 
posing the patient to be placed with his head in the 
centre of a table capable of being made to revolve 
on its axis, a moderate speed of rotation would cause 
abstraction of blood from the head and determina- 
tion of it towards the feet; while, contrariwise, if 
his feet were placed in the centre and his head at 
the circumference, his head would become congested. 
Of course I saw at once that such proceedings would 
be extremely dangerous. But it was manifest that 
by modified arrangements dangers might be avoided. 
If the patient were placed not radially but in a trans- 
verse position, then the relative distances of the head 
and feet from the centre might be so adjusted as to 

331 



232 EUTHANASIA. 

have any degree of inequality. In that case rotation 
would produce any desired amount of effect on the 
circulation through the brain. 

My idea did not go beyond the stage of specula- 
tion, for it was obvious that the required appliances 
would be expensive and would require a large room 
to themselves, so that the experiment could not be 
tried in my own house. Presently I reverted to the 
idea in its first form — head in the centre and feet at 
the periphery; and it occurred to me that the fatal 
result quickly entailed on a patient so placed, even 
when the velocity of rotation was moderate, was a 
fatal result which might intentionally be produced 
where the death-penalty had been pronounced. Sup- 
posing the sentiment of revenge to be excluded, and 
supposing it decided that criminals of an extremely 
degraded type may best be put out of existence, there 
would thus be provided for them a simple means of 
euthanasia. The effects of rotation would be first 
faintness, and then insensibility — an insensibility 
soon made permanent if rotation was continued. 
For when, after a few revolutions at considerable 
speed, the brain had been emptied of blood, as well 
as the ascending aorta and in large measure the 
heart, cessation could not be followed by a back-flow 
from the lower parts of the body sufficient to re-es- 
tablish the actions of the organs thus thrown out of 
gear; and, unquestionably, continuance of rotation 



EUTHANASIA. 233 

for some time would make revival altogether impos- 
sible. 

For a while I entertained the thought of having 
the experiment tried at the Home for Lost Dogs, 
where I believe that ownerless and worthless dogs 
are made away with by some anaesthetic. My 
scheme, as modified for this experiment, was not that 
of a rotating table, but that of two radially-placed 
wings on opposite sides of a vertical rotating axis; 
each being trough-shaped, the one to contain the vic- 
tim and the other to contain such weights as balanced 
it, so as to prevent that irregularity of motion which 
arises when the masses of matter on opposite sides 
of an axis of rotation are not in equilibrium. But to 
seek out the drawing instruments of my engineering 
days, and make the requisite design and working 
drawings, and afterwards to superintend the arti- 
sans, threatened to be too serious a business. Sus- 
pension of more important work would have been 
needful, for I had no longer energy enough to carry 
on the two at once. Hence the idea dropped. 

I name it here in the hope that some one with 
adequate time and means will do that which I was 
compelled to leave undone. 



16 



THE KEFOEM OF COMPANY-LAW. 

So far as I have observed, projects for Company- 
law reform have concerned only the methods pursued 
in the formation of companies. They have had for 
their aims to restrain the fraudulent doings of pro- 
moters, and to prevent delusion of the public by the 
parading of apparently-responsible directors whose 
influential names have been indirectly purchased. 
But no thought appears to have been given to abuses 
existing in the administrations of established com- 
panies. Extremely grave evils are, however, to be 
observed in these, and it is high time they should be 
checked. 

Bred of the great political superstition that there 
is no limit to the powers of a Parliamentary major- 
ity (except the limit of physical impossibility) there 
has long prevailed, and now appears more dominant 
than ever, the notion that, given any kind of elected 
body — council, directors, or what not — which was 
created for a generally-understood purpose, a major- 
ity of it may undertake other purposes never con- 
templated when its members were appointed. In an 
234 



THE REFORM OF COMPANY-LAW. 235 

article on " Kailway Morals and Bailway Policy," 
published in the Edinburgh Review for October, 
1854 (see Essays, library edition, vol. Ill), I pointed 
out the great mischiefs arising from this misinterpre- 
tation of the proprietary contract, and gave an illus- 
tration of the way in which there arose an abnormal 
forcing on of extensions and branch lines: directors 
and all connected with the administration being en- 
abled, by guaranteed shares, to make profits at the 
expense of the shareholders at large. Since then this 
practice of committing companies to subsidiary un- 
dertakings, not originally even dreamed of, has great- 
ly extended: hotels, docks, lines of steamers, mines, 
&c, being successively forced on men who originally 
subscribed money to make a railway from A to B. 

And now we see the like illegitimate extension 
taking place in industrial companies. Directors who 
were elected simply to carry on the business of brew- 
ing, are allowed to enter on speculative enterprises; 
buying not ordinary tied-houses only, but great ho- 
tels, and even subscribing large sums to speculative 
enterprises utterly alien to their own: witness the 
case of Samuel Allsopp and Sons, Limited, as recent- 
ly reported (The Times, August 31, 1901) : the re- 
sult being an enormous loss and a depreciation of 
shares. Another example is furnished by the Lino- 
type Company, formed originally for the purpose of 
making and selling Linotype machines.' By the ac- 



236 THE REFORM OF COMPANY-LAW. 

tion of its directors this company has been led into 
making printing appliances of various kinds ; so that 
those who joined in an enterprise of which they 
found reason to think well, are now committed to 
many other enterprises which they know nothing 
about. Of this abuse, taking another form, an ex- 
treme case is furnished by the doings of the Lon- 
don and Globe Finance Corporation, as shown in 
recent exposures. Here the board became simply a 
speculator to an enormous extent, buying up vast 
amounts of mining shares to obtain permanent con- 
trol; and the various transactions, altogether un- 
known to the proprietary, were also in chief measure 
unknown to all the directors save one — the managing 
director. Besides such excesses of directorial power 
there are other excesses shown by committing the 
proprietors to large organic changes. At a recent 
meeting of the Metropolitan District Railway, the 
chairman pointed out that had it not been for the 
immense error committed by past boards of directors, 
in issuing perpetual Six per cent, debentures and 
perpetual Five per cent, preference stock, the com- 
pany would now be a prosperous concern. 

How directorial power should be curbed is a diffi- 
cult question to answer. More deliberation might 
perhaps be insisted on. Measures of importance are 
too easily decided and carried out by boards of di- 
rectors. Should there not be restraints akin to those 



THE REFORM OP COMPANY-LAW. 237 

which our two legislative houses impose ou them- 
selves by requiring a second and a third considera- 
tion ? That there exists, in some cases at least, as I 
have ascertained, a course of business which involves 
re-considerations is true; but something more sys- 
tematic would probably be beneficial. It may also be 
reasonably asked whether all measures implying con- 
siderable changes, or expenditures of large amounts, 
should not be referred to the proprietary — whether 
before a final decision there should not be something 
like a referendum. Doubtless most of the proprie- 
tors would be incapable of judging, and in so far the 
procedure would be inoperative; but from some 
capable business-men would come judgments for and 
against, with reasons which might weigh; and be- 
yond that, there would, in important cases, be the 
check put by publication in the financial Press; for 
of course through one or other channel the informa- 
tion would pass from the proprietary to the public. 
Is it not likely that when the directors of a brewery 
company were obliged thus to let men at large know 
that they were proposing to speculate in the shares of 
an amusement company, the Press-criticisms would 
check them, to the great advantage of the proprie- 
tary % And might not the unwisdom of the proposal 
to saddle the shareholders of a railway-company with 
a large amount of Five per cent, perpetual prefer- 
ence stock and perpetual Six per cent, debentures, 



238 THE REFORM OF COMPANY-LAW. 

when commented upon by the railway- journals, suf- 
fice to prevent so impolitic a step ? " But would not 
anything like a referendum be a great hindrance to 
business ? " Hindrance ? Yes ; this is exactly the 
thing wanted. Within the last fifty years a hundred 
millions of capital have been lost from want of such 
hindrances. 

Abuses which might readily have been foreseen 
have arisen from the practice of making the chair- 
man of a board of directors also chairman of the 
meeting of proprietors — abuses which would not 
have existed had there been a practice like that 
which, in the House of Commons, results in a Speak- 
er who is independent alike of the party in power 
and of the opposition. The present arrangement is 
conspicuously absurd. At a periodical gathering of 
shareholders the directors have to render an account 
of their stewardship, and to ask for the shareholders' 
approval of what they have done. Yet such being 
the purpose it is thought proper that the chief stew- 
ard shall preside and regulate the proceedings! Of 
course as chairman he has large power of impeding 
opponents and aiding those who support the board. 
He may assert that a speech is out of order, or that 
it must be ended from lack of time, or that other 
business must be brought forward; or appointed 
mouth-pieces of the board in the meeting may in- 



THE REFORM OF COMPANY-LAW. 239 

terrupt or contradict; so that, save in cases of ex- 
treme misbehaviour arousing the general anger of 
the proprietary, there is little chance that an opposi- 
tion will make itself fairly heard. But it needs no 
detail to show that if you give a board whose doings 
are to be examined, power over the proceedings of 
the examining body, that power will inevitably be 
used to hinder investigation and prevent blame. 

That the current practice entails conspicuous 
mischiefs, here is a proof. Company A, with good 
prospects, needs more capital and has exhausted its 
means of obtaining it. As a last resort there is 
formed company B, consisting mainly of large share- 
holders in company A who have confidence in its 
future. An agreement is made under which com- 
pany B is to buy all the products made by company 
A and pay cash for them; thus practically increas- 
ing company A's capital, by rendering needless the 
amount required for giving credit. But company B 
does this only on condition of receiving a large com- 
mission on the sale of company A's goods. At the 
same time company B enters upon a like commission- 
business in the sale of machines of other kinds. Now 
this arrangement under which, as said by its chair- 
man, company B becomes practically a banker to 
company A, obtaining high interest on loans, is of 
limited duration — ^.ve years or ten years, I do not 
remember which. It is therefore company B's inter- 



240 THE REFORM OF COMPANY-LAW. 

est to obtain a renewal of the agreement, so as to 
force company A to go on selling machines through 
its agency and paying this high commission ; though 
company A, having become highly prosperous, no 
longer needs any such banking aid. But now mark 
the significant fact that the same gentleman is chair- 
man of both companies. As having a large invest- 
ment in company B, which reaps immense dividends, 
he is, as shown by his utterances, strongly desirous 
of obtaining a renewal of the agreement. Hence 
when presiding over a meeting of company A he is 
swayed by interests at variance with those of its 
shareholders, and is prompted to get the agreement 
renewed by whatever means he can — say, among 
others, the postponement of the question of renewal 
till the close of the meeting, when a large number have 
gone away leaving behind those most interested in 
getting the renewal. Clearly under the presidency 
of one who was unconcerned in the result, company 
A would be much less likely to be disadvantaged. 

What remedy is there for this defect in the pres- 
ent system of procedure? The appointment of a 
chairman on the spur of the moment would not an- 
swer; since, by following plans previously laid, the 
board would readily get its own nominee elected. 
Much as one may dislike invoking public agency, yet 
it may be argued that for the due administration of 
justice, it would be fit that there should be some ten 



THE REFORM OF COMPANY-LAW. 241 

or more official chairmen to company-meetings, anal- 
ogous to Official Beferees, each of whom should re- 
ceive the day before any meeting he was appointed 
to by a public authority, the programme of business 
to be gone through. 

One more evil, greater even than those above de- 
scribed, remains. This is the system of voting by 
proxy. As originally devised, a proxy "was a means 
of enabling one who could not attend a meeting, but 
had reasons for voting with or against some proposal, 
to register his vote by the agency of a person with 
whom he was in agreement, or on whose judgment 
he could rely. It was never intended to be a sur- 
render of judgment on all and every matter into the 
hands of some one, usually unknown, who might or 
might not be an unbiassed judge. Into this, how- 
ever, the system has grown. On receiving from the 
secretary a form duly stamped and issued at the cost 
of the company, and naming the chairman, or if not, 
some alternative director, or if not, another director, 
and so on, as his proxy, the ordinary unreflecting 
shareholder, instead of throwing it into the fire or 
waste-paper basket, thinks himself bound to sign it, 
filled up in favour of one or other of those named — is 
under a vague feeling of obligation that he must do 
something with it in the manner suggested. If asked 
his reason for thus giving to an unknown person 



242 THE REFORM OP COMPANY-LAW. 

power to decide an unknown matter, he replies that 
the directors' interests are the same as his, and that 
they know more about the company's affairs than he 
does. As I have pointed out in the essay above 
named, and have there conclusively shown by facts, 
this supposed unity of interests often does not exist, 
and I have above further proved this: the interests 
of directors may be in sundry ways at variance with 
those of proprietors. Yet the effect of this proxy- 
system as now developed is to give directors uncon- 
trolled powers. The shareholders who have unques- 
tioning faith in the governing body are so numerous, 
that their votes overwhelm the votes of those who at- 
tend the meetings, and either already know a good 
deal about the matters to be decided or gain insight 
into them during the proceedings. In the hands of 
interested manipulators the ignorance of the many is 
used to extinguish the knowledge of the few. And 
then, naming the large number of proxies they have 
received, the directors tacitly boast of the confidence 
placed in them and the implied justification of their 
policy. The last and most striking illustration of 
this which I have observed, was furnished by a meet- 
ing of the London and Globe Finance Corporation, 
reported in The Times for January 10, 1901 — a 
company the transactions of which had been, and 
were then, under grave suspicion. But the infatu- 
ated shareholders did not waver, as was shown by the 



THE REFORM OF COMPANY-LAW. 243 

following statement of the managing director and 

autocrat : — 

"Mr. Whitaker Wright, in seconding the motion, stated 
that the directors had received proxies for nearly 1,000,000 
shares in the company (cheers) ; the proxies lodged in opposi- 
tion amounted to 26,394 shares ; and proxies representing 4,987 
shares had come in too late. That showed the view of the 
shareholders." 

The worth of this boasted confidence may be judged 
by the fact that the company is now in course of 
liquidation under an order of the Court. 

But the proxy-system does more than enable di- 
rectors to carry out schemes that are at variance with 
the interest of proprietors: it also makes the board 
an invulnerable oligarchy. In a case which I have 
in mind (being a shareholder), the chairman trium- 
phantly specified the great number of proxies in 
their hands which they had used for the re-election 
of a director whose place had, in the ordinary rou- 
tine, been vacated. What corollary is to be drawn? 
Spite of opposition, the board as a whole may, by the 
use of proxies sent to its members, insure the re-elec- 
tion of any one of their number who is about to re- 
tire. Or otherwise the chairman, in whose favour 
the great mass of the proxies are made out, is en- 
abled, when any member of the board becomes dis- 
agreeably recalcitrant — a " guinea-pig " who unex- 
pectedly proves to have a will of his own — to use his 
proxies in favour of some new candidiate whom he 



24:4 THE REFORM OF COMPANY-LAW. 

has picked out. Thus the representative government 
of a company is reduced to a farce. The board be- 
comes first an oligarchy and then an autocracy. 

Do I hope for any results from these protests, or 
any such protests ? No ; there is a conclusive reason 
why no changes of the kind required will be made. 
Three out of four of our legislators have seats on one 
or other board of directors: some of them seats on 
many boards. The reforms made by them in their 
capacity of legislators would restrict their powers in 
their capacity of directors. Any one who expects 
that they will thus sacrifice themselves takes a view 
of human nature altogether at variance with experi- 
ence. 



SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 

It has been noted as curious that while Newton 
rejected the undulatory theory of light propounded 
by Huyghens, Huyghens refused to accept the theory 
of universal gravitation set forth by Newton. 

Why do I name here this seemingly irrelevant 
fact? Simply as an illustration of the truth that 
the opinions of experts, even of supreme rank, are 
not always to be accepted as final. Doctrines reject- 
ed by the highest authorities sometimes prove true, 
and consequently some small scepticism concerning 
beliefs apparently unquestionable may be allowed. 
This must be my excuse for venturing opinions 
which will not meet with acceptance among experts 
in music. 

And first let me note that musical experts are 

specially exposed to perverting influences. Music 

has two distinct components — the sensational and the 

relational. One part of the impression it produces 

results from the character of the tones, and the other 

part from the mode of combination of the tones. 

The feeling a piece of music produces may be in 

various degrees pleasurable or sometimes painful, ac- 

245 



246 SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 

cording as the component tones have timbres that 
are in various degrees agreeable or sometimes even 
disagreeable; while there is another pleasure which 
the successions and combinations of tones may give 
apart from their qualities. From this platitude 
there is a corollary which here concerns us. The 
tones are the products of the voices or instruments 
employed, and though the singer and the player re- 
spectively try to improve them, they are in their 
main qualities fixed. The chief part of the execu- 
tive skill to be gained, especially by the instrumen- 
talist, is skill in producing successions of tones in 
the most perfect way, or, as on the piano, combina- 
tions of tones: the relational element of the music 
predominates in his thoughts. Still more is this so 
with the composer. In his mind the relational ele- 
ment is practically the exclusive element. While he 
desires that his ideas shall be expressed in fine tones, 
and tones appropriately varied, yet, as composer, he 
is almost wholly occupied with such arrangements of 
tones, successive and simultaneous, as will convey 
his ideas. The very name composer implies this. 
Hence it happens that in chief measure the composer, 
and in large measure the performer, when judging 
of a musical effect, thinks more of its relational char- 
acters than of its sensational characters. A Paga- 
nini will take greater pride in his marvellous dexter- 
ity of arm and finger than in the timbres of his tones, 



SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 247 

though he desires that these also shall be good. And 
similarly a Beethoven, when listening to a symphony 
he has composed, will receive greater gratification 
from the beautiful successions and complexes of its 
notes, than from the tones of the various instruments, 
however good they may be. Hence, then, musicians 
of both classes necessarily tend to overvalue the re- 
lational elements. If the relational elements are 
good they will be apt to condone defects in the sen- 
sational elements : witness the way in which they tol- 
erate the grunts made in playing a forte passage on 
the double bass. 

Among sequences of the implied tendency, one is 
their exaltation of the violin and forgiveness of its 
grave defects. It is currently called a perfect in- 
strument — perfect in the sense that it expresses with 
facility all the relational elements of music — all the 
varieties of contrasts and kinds of contrasts among 
tones. But the poorness of the tones themselves is 
overlooked. They have two incurable defects. One 
is conspicuous — the hiss of the bow and production 
of high over-tones as it is drawn over the string, 
which, however much subdued by a first-rate player, 
can never be wholly got rid of. The other, though 
not conspicuous, is no less great, perhaps even greater. 
The sounds come from strings restrained in their 
vibrations. Continuous contact of the bow prevents 
each string from reaching the normal limit of its 



( 



248 SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 

swing in either direction, and the character of the 
air-waves produced differs from what it would be 
were the oscillations unchecked. There is clear 
proof of this. Contrast the tones of a violin with 
the tones of an iEolian harp. The two are alike in 
the respect that their vibrating strings are attached 
to sounding boxes, but unlike in the respect that the 
vibrations are in the one case checked and in the 
other case unchecked. No one will deny that the 
sounds of the iEolian harp are far sweeter than 
those of the violin: which last, indeed, suggest the 
voice of a shrew in a good temper. 

To this contentment of musicians with an instru- 
ment so imperfect in its tones though perfect in its 
relational expressiveness, we may ascribe the char- 
acters of orchestras; since in them the tones of 
stringed instruments so greatly predominate. We 
are all of us, composers and musicians included, 
brought up in passive acceptance of ideas, sentiments, 
and usages, political, religious, and social, and I may 
here add artistic. We accept the qualities of orches- 
tral music as in a sense necessary; never asking 
whether they are or are not all that can be desired. 
But if we succeed in escaping from these influences 
of custom, we may perceive that orchestras are very 
defective. Beauty they can render; grace they can 
render; delicacy they can render; but where is the 
dignity, where is the grandeur? There is a lack of 



SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 249 

adequate impressiveness. Think of the volume and 
quality of the tones coming from an organ, and then 
think of those coming from an orchestra. There is 
a massive emotion produced by the one which the 
other never produces: you cannot get dignity from a\ 
number of violins. This under-valuation of the sen- 
sational element in music is, I think, clearly shown 
by the way in which musicians tolerate the perform- 
ance of chamber-music in a great hall. For many 
years past, the Monday Popular Concerts and the 
Saturday-afternoon Rehearsals, have made this abuse 
conspicuous. I say advisedly — abuse, for it is utter- 
ly at variance with the intentions of the composers. 
A quartet or a piece for five or six stringed instru- 
ments, is intended to be played in a small room : the 
composer knowing that only by the reverberation it 
gives can there be produced that volume of sound re- 
quired for the harmonies ; since, necessarily, the sen- 
sations caused by the concords of sounds are much 
weaker than those caused by the sounds themselves. 
But this need for a small room, which the name 
" chamber-music " implies, is ignored, and there is 
contentment with performance in a vast space where 
the harmonies become feeble. The reason is clear. 
As the relational elements are well rendered this de- 
ficiency of the sensational elements is forgiven.* 

* Of course it will be said that quartets, &c, performed in 
small rooms would entail loss : the audiences would not be large 
17 



250 SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 

Yet a further defect is produced in orchestral 

music by the supremacy of stringed instruments. 

Not only are the violins predominant in the "sense 

that they yield the greater part of the sound, but also 

in the sense that their presence is continuous: they 

are always making themselves heard. The result is 

a lack of massive variety: there are plenty of small 

varieties, but not enough of large ones. That this is 

enough. This is a sufficient reply from the entrepreneur's point 
of view, but the needs of musical effect cannot be satisfied by any 
such plea. My belief is that a composer would rather not have 
his quartet performed at all than have it performed in a way that 
sacrifices so much of its beauty. I am the more led to believe 
this on remembering that after one or two experiences I ceased 
to attend these performances : being dissatisfied with the general 
thinness and with the feebleness of the harmonies. 

Here I may add that I have sometimes speculated about the 
possibility of fitting a room for musical purposes by increasing its 
resonance. If, as every one knows, surfaces such as those of cur- 
tains deaden sound by not reflecting it, and if, as every one 
knows, a voice in an empty room is much louder than in a fur- 
nished one, it is inferable that a room having surfaces which vi- 
brate will give an increased volume to sound. Suppose that along 
the line of the cornice and again along the line of the skirting a 
rigid iron or steel framework were fixed with brackets at intervals, 
strong enough to bear a great vertical strain. Suppose again 
that pine boards, say nine inches wide and a quarter or half an 
inch thick, varnished so as to exclude atmospheric moisture, were 
fastened vertically between these two framings at one-eighth of 
an inch apart ; each terminating in an iron clamp at top and bot- 
tom but independent of the framework, save by the intermedia- 
tion of a powerful screw at each end attached to the clamp, and 
capable of being tightened more or less. And suppose these 
boards, strained by the screws at each end but otherwise free, 
to be also free from the wall : an interval of an inch or so inter- 
vening. Thus covering the entire surface of the room, these 



SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 251 

a grave defect may be positively asserted, for it is de- 
ductible from a universal principle of art. Achieved 
by arrangement of contrasts, great and small, art of 
every kind forbids that monotony caused by the di- 
recting of constant attention to one element. Orches- 
tral effects need much greater specialization. Sounds 
of kindred qualities should at one moment be used 
for one purpose and then sounds of other kindred 
qualities should be used for another purpose: thus 
differentiating the masses of sound more than at 
present. In fact, there requires a larger step in evo- 
lution — a more marked advance from the indefinitely 
homogeneous to the definitely heterogeneous. 

Further contemplation of the contrast between 
the emotion produced by an organ and that produced 
by an orchestra, shows that a large part of this con- 
trast is due to the far greater predominance which 
the bass has in the organ than in the orchestra. It is 
from the volume of an organ's deep tones that there 
comes that profound impressiveness which an or- 

boards might, on the occasion of any approaching performance, 
be tuned by the adjusting screws, so that the dull tones they 
gave out when struck, though relatively deep would be in har- 
mony with the tones of the instruments, and so that, by vibra- 
tion in nodal divisions, higher notes would be yielded. The aerial 
waves striking them would be not only reflected back as in an 
empty room, but would be reflected back reinforced by the vi- 
brations of the boards they struck. One who doubts the ability 
of the boards thus to respond, needs but to recall the ability of 
the metal disc of a telephone to respond to the faint sounds con- 
stituting articulations. 



252 SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 

chestra lacks. As a masculine trait, deep tones are 
associated with power, and their effect is therefore 
relatively imposing. To show that this is so, it needs 
but to recall a part of an organ performance in which 
the upper tones only are used, to see that but little 
of the dignity and grandeur remain. Necessarily, 
therefore, in an orchestra, while the sounds of the 
violins are predominant, the trait of dignity is 
absent. 

There is another way in which the bass-element is 
unduly subordinated. Besides having too small a 
share in the mass of sounds which constitute any 
complex composition, it is habitually excluded from 
the leadership. The theme is almost invariably 
given to the treble, and the bass is relegated to the 
accompaniment. This was not always so. In old 
times when, omitting folk-songs, church-music was 
the only music, such air or melody as existed was 
taken by the bass. Necessarily, indeed, this hap- 
pened; since in those days it was thought improper 
that women should sing the praises of God in the 
presence of men ; and it is not likely that there were 
boy-choristers. Even now, in Continental church- 
music, the bass takes a dominant part, and especially 
so in Eussia, where unusually deep basses are in re- 
quest for church-services.* What caused the change ? 

* It is narrated that one of these church-choristers, noted for 
his extremely deep and powerful bass, was once when travelling 



SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 253 

From Sir Hubert Parry's work, The Evolution of the 
Art of Music (pp. 105-9), it appears that the growth 
of secular choral music was achieved by adding 
higher voice parts to these bass church-melodies : thus 
preparing the way for transfer of melodies to the 
treble. Possibly the eventual supremacy of the treble 
was in part due to the fact that, when rude forms of 
opera arose, librettists and composers were prompted 
by the sex-sentiment to give the leading part to the 
heroine, with the result that the accompanying or- 
chestral music came to have a predominance of treble 
tones. There may have been a further influence. 
If, as is alleged, instrumental music of the higher 
kinds grew out of dance-music, then as in dance- 
music the treble, most expressive of liveliness, ha- 
bitually predominated, this monopolizing of the lead- 
ership by the treble followed naturally. Be the cause 
what it may, however, assignment of the themes, or 
leading figures, or melodies, to the treble, has become 
an established tradition. May not this tradition be 
fitly challenged? Greater variety, greater repress- 
iveness, greater beauty, might I think be attained by 
dividing the leadership, and giving the bass if not 
an equal share still a large share. Some illustra- 
tions may be named as justifying this belief. In 

attacked by robbers ; but when he began to roar at them they 
fled, thinking it impossible that any one but a supernatural being 
could emit such sounds. 



254 SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 

that charming old song " Pur dicesti," a fine effect 
is produced when, during an interval, the bass ac- 
companiment takes up the melody. In the three 
Contre-Tanze by Beethoven, as arranged for the 
piano by Seiss, the first in quite an exceptional way 
gives the melody to the bass, and the effect is ex- 
tremely refreshing. And then there is the third 
movement of Beethoven's C-minor Symphony, in 
which the prominent part taken by the bass gives a 
distinguishing grandeur, at the same time that it 
gives unusual variety. Is it not time that the femi- 
nine element should lose its predominance, and that 
the masculine element should come to the front along 
with it \ 

Among future changes some old forms of orches- 
tral music may possibly lose their pre-eminence. It 
is said that the symphony was originally a suite de 
pieces — the pieces being dance-music. Hence, con- 
sidered as a work of art, the symphony has no natu- 
ral coherence. Further, it seems that since in the 
choice of pieces to form the suite, the aim must have 
been variety, the successive pieces were selected not 
for their kinship but for their absence of kinship. 
Of course a like remark applies to the sonata, in 
which, also, the absence of kinship is conspicuous: 
instance Beethoven's Op. 26, in which the funeral 
march stands in such strong contrast alike with the 
scherzo which precedes it and with the allegro which 



SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 255 

succeeds it. It may be true that in each such work a 
design runs through the whole — that between the 
beginning and the ending in the same key, the 
changes of key to the dominant and sub-dominant 
preserve a structural relationship; that the connex- 
ions among the themes are so maintained that by 
the instructed musician a passage is recognized as 
appropriately related to a preceding passage a hun- 
dred or two bars away ; and that thus to a " high 
musical intelligence " the coherence is appreciable, 
and pleasure given by " the beauty of thought " dis- 
played in the construction. But here we have ex- 
emplified that misdirection of art before commented 
upon, which makes intellectual interest a dominant 
aim. Truly artistic changes should be such as min- 
ister to natural changes of feeling, either emotional 
or sensational, such as might naturally arise from 
changes of mood. Arbitrary ones, however skilfully 
managed, negative that manifest coherence which a 
work of art should have. 

Are there not possible forms of orchestral music 
which shall present successive stages in the evolu- 
tion of a musical inspiration ? Might not a piece of 
such kind begin with a rudimentary figure occupying 
attention for a short space ? Then out of this might 
there not come a slightly elaborated form, or rather 
several such forms diverging in different ways, each 
giving scope for varieties of orchestral treatment, 



256 SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 

and such of them as were least successful being 
dropped? Out of the best might there not come a 
further elaboration, admitting of more numerous in- 
strumental combinations; and again disappearance 
of the inferior leading to survival of the most fin- 
ished theme with its developed accompaniments? 
Similarly by variation and selection might be evolved 
a musical idea still better adapted to the sentiment 
of the piece; and so on continuously. Meanwhile 
by deviation from one or other of these figures or 
melodic passages might come some conception so far 
different in character as to furnish novelty of effect ; 
and this being in like ways developed through suc- 
cessive stages might yield the needful large contrasts ; 
and so on step by step until the highest development 
of the composition was reached. Thus might be 
achieved that coherence which, characterizing evolu- 
tion, should characterize a work of art. There would 
also result the heterogeneity which is a trait of de- 
velopment; as well as that concomitant trait of in- 
creasing definiteness, implied by the finished form 
of the conception. At the same time the auditor 
would have the pleasure of watching the gradual 
unfolding of the composer's idea, and the succes- 
sive exaltations of the sentiment expressed; while 
the variety in unity would be step by step made 
manifest. 

Here let me close my heretical suggestions. In 



SOME MUSICAL HERESIES. 257 

music as in all other things the one certainty is that 
the future will differ from the past and from the 
present; and perhaps an outsider may not be alto- 
gether unjustified in suggesting what some of the 
divergences may be. 

Postscript. — Criticisms passed on the first edi- 
tion of this volume have shown the need for explain- 
ing that ill-health had prevented me from hearing an A 
opera or concert for the last twenty years. Hence 
it may be, as alleged, that some of the suggestions 
above made are no longer called for as much as they 
were twenty years ago. One reply made to me is 
that in modern compositions the bass takes a more 
conspicuous part than in older ones. But I still find 
reasons for thinking that the bass is unduly subordi- 
nated: even the intentions of the composer being 
sometimes disregarded. Recently, on purchasing a \ 
copy of " The Magic Flute" (Boosey's edition), ar- 
ranged for the piano, which I was prompted to do by 
remembrance of the magnificent bass solo it contains, 
I found to my disgust that in the pianoforte arrange- 
ment this bass solo had been transferred to the treble ! 



DISTINGUISHED DISSEOTEKS. 

" Fobce till right is ready," was a maxim with 
Mr. Matthew Arnold. It expressed his general ex- 
altation of authority. Curiously enough, along with 
his recurring condemnation of " machinery " went 
laudation of controlling agencies, which necessarily 
implied machinery for achieving contemplated bene- 
fits. Hence his advocacy of an Academy. Hence 
his applause of the Continental regime at large, 
which is relatively coercive. Hence his implied 
praise of a State-church notwithstanding his aban- 
donment of the creed taught by it. And hence his 
expressions of dislike for dissenters. 

That this contempt of those who, as he puts it, 
divide their energies between " business and Beth- 
els," had some reason, cannot be denied. The dis- 
senting world as a whole coincides in large measure 
with the middle-class world, joined with a superior 
part of the working-class world. Those included do 
not display any of that culture on which Mr. Arnold 
perpetually insists, but pass their lives in a dull Tin- 
intellectual routine : not, however, as he admits, dif- 
258 



DISTINGUISHED DISSENTERS. 259 

f ering much in intellectuality from the mass of those 
above them. Unfortunately for his argument, how- 
ever, he has made a comparison, or professed to make 
a comparison, between the notable men among 
churchmen and dissenters respectively. I say un- 
fortunately because, swayed by his own culture ex- 
clusively, he has recognized only literary achieve- 
ments, or rather, achievements in that literature 
classed as divinity: naming Hooker, Barrow, But- 
ler on the one side, and Milton, Baxter, and Wesley 
on the other : adding that these last " were trained 
within the pale of the Establishment." (Culture and 
Anarchy, xx.) But if any fair comparison is to be 
made between Church and Dissent in respect of their 
distinguished men, then men of scientific distinction 
must be included ; and if this be done Dissent comes 
prominently into the foreground. 

We have first the achievement of Priestley in the 
discovery of oxygen, who, though he " builded better 
than he knew," and did not understand the full 
meaning of his results, nevertheless brought to light 
the element which, judged by the part it plays, may 
be called the most important of all the elements, and 
who, beyond this discovery, added much to our 
knowledge by his many scientific researches: being 
also a man widely cultured in various ways, linguis- 
tic and other. 

'Next in order of time comes the Quaker Young, 



260 DISTINGUISHED DISSENTERS. 

who from his early days was an Admirable Crichton ; 
displaying not only knowledge but originality of 
many kinds. In adult life his two greatest achieve- 
ments, quite opposite in their natures, were decipher- 
ment of the Egyptian hieroglyphics and demonstra- 
tion of the undulatory theory of light. That which 
Huyghens left as a hypothesis, he established as a 
demonstrated truth; and he did this in a manner so 
masterly that Herschel described his investigations as 
worthy of Newton. Equally in business, in science, 
and in linguistic lore, he was conspicuous — more con- 
spicuous abroad than at home. 

Out of this same small sect, the Quakers, came 
another revolutionary thinker — Dalton. Only vague 
conceptions about chemical combinations had, up to 
this time, prevailed ; and though Bryan and William 
Higgins had foreshadowed atomic combination, it was 
reserved for Dalton to propound the Atomic Theory 
of matter. In conformity with this universally-ac- 
cepted theory, all chemical investigations are now 
carried on, all chemical combinations and decompo- 
sitions interpreted, so that there is no substance (ex- 
cluding mere mixtures) which is not regarded as 
composed of definite proportions. Whether the 
atoms of which compounds are formed are regarded 
as actual units of different kinds, or whether they 
are regarded as merely symbolical, there remains in 
either case the truth that there is an exact equiva- 



DISTINGUISHED DISSENTERS. 261 

lence between the amounts of different elements 
which combine, and between the components of their 
re-combinations. Dalton was elected, without his re- 
quest, to the Royal Society and to the French Acad- 
emy of Sciences. It should be added that he was the 
first to enunciate the law of the expansion of gases 
by heat, and that he pursued with success sundry 
other lines of research. 

We come lastly to Faraday, universally known for 
the variety and importance of his achievements in 
physics. First there came his discoveries in electro- 
magnetism, and the induction of electric currents: 
the result being the establishment of that mutual 
relation of electric action and magnetic action which 
initiated the vast series of modern electrical develop- 
ments. Then followed the reduction of electrolytic 
action to a definite form — the proof of the electrical 
equivalence of the ions of any compound decomposed. 
After an interval came the magnetization of polar- 
ized light, and the phenomena of diamagnetism : two 
openings into new fields of scientific research. 

As implied above, the comparison made by Mr. 
Matthew Arnold between men of Conformist origin 
and men of Nonconformist origin, he ostensibly lim- 
ited to those who have produced moral effects on the 
community. He writes : — 

"An establishment which has produced Hooker, Barrow, 
Butler, has done more to moralise and ennoble English states- 



262 DISTINGUISHED DISSENTERS. 

men and their conduct than communities which have produced 
the Nonconformist divines. The fruitful men of English Puri- 
tanism and Nonconformity are men who were trained within 
the pale of the Establishment — Milton, Baxter, Wesley. A 
generation or two outside the Establishment, and Puritanism 
produces men of national mark no more." 

Kow even if we restrict the comparison in the 
way Mr. Arnold does, it may be effectively contended 
that towards moralising and ennobling English 
statesmen the men he names have done less than 
men of the class he derides — less than Romilly, who, 
of Nonconformist (Huguenot) origin, initiated the 
de-barbarization of our penal code — less than How- 
ard, who did so much towards humanizing the treat- 
ment of prisoners — less than the three Quakers, Dill- 
wyn, Wood, and Sharp, who began the anti-slavery 
agitation, and, with the Sturges and others of the 
same sect, greatly contributed to its success — less, 
too, than the once-ridiculed but afterwards honoured 
John Bright, who was an efficient agent towards re- 
peal of the taxes on food, and was conspicuous as 
the leading opponent of a war since recognized as 
having cost much life and treasure to no purpose. If 
any one looks for the ennobling and moralising ef- 
fects of the bishops on the conduct of the House of 
Lords, he will look long to small purpose ; and, speak- 
ing generally of the lower House, it is manifest that 
all the steps in liberalization, that is, towards nobler 
institutions, have not proceeded from those brought 



DISTINGUISHED DISSENTERS. 263 

up under Church-discipline, but have proceeded, 
either directly or through outside influences, from 
men of Nonconformist origin. So that even if we 
narrow the comparison as Mr. Arnold does, the con- 
clusion goes against him. 

But, as already indicated, the strange fact is that 
Mr. Arnold excludes from the comparison all those 
mental achievements by which the lives of our nation 
and of other nations have been mainly influenced. 
He says — " A generation or two outside the Estab- 
lishment, and Puritanism produces men of national 
mark no more " — national mark being, in Mr. Ar- 
nold's view, estimated only by production of litera- 
ture: scientific discovery being ignored. It is curi- 
ous to observe what a blinding effect culture, of the 
literary kind alone, may have. For it would seem 
that Mr. Arnold knows nothing of those great revolu- 
tions in thought which, in the course of the last cen- 
tury, were produced by Priestley, Dalton, Young, 
and Faraday. Puritanism, he says, " after a gen- 
eration or two outside the Establishment, produces 
men of national mark no more " ; whereas these men 
were not only men of national mark but men of 
world-wide mark — men whose discoveries affected 
the mental careers of the scientifically-cultured every- 
where, while changing the industrial activities of 
mankind at large. Consider what would be the state 
of chemical knowledge had not Priestley discovered 



264: DISTINGUISHED DISSENTERS. 

oxygen, understanding little though he did the part 
it plays in the order of Nature. Consider where 
would have been the fabric of chemical combinations 
in all the enormous complexities it has reached, in 
the absence of Dalton's Atomic Theory. Consider 
what would be the state of astro-physics, and our 
knowledge of the constitutions of the stars and nebu- 
lae, had not the undulatory theory of light been dem- 
onstrated by Young. And consider what would have 
been our ideas of the electric and magnetic forces and 
their connexions with light, had not Faraday ini- 
tiated the theory of their correlations, and led the 
way towards those vast conceptions of universal 
forces which now pervade physical inquiry, as well as 
to those vast applications of them which are trans- 
forming industry. 

Quite unawares Mr. Arnold, by the criticism he 
provokes, has done the reverse of that which he in- 
tended. Incidentally he has drawn attention to the 
astounding fact that, during less than a century, 
these four English dissenters did more towards revo- 
lutionizing the world's physical conceptions, and by 
consequence its activities, than any other four men 
who can be named. 



BAEBAEIC AET. 

A connexion naturally exists between barbaric 
types of art and barbaric types of society. Autoc- 
racy is the origin of both. 

As shown when treating of modern Imperialism 
and of Ee-barbarization, both are concomitants of 
growing militancy; and militancy in its developed 
form implies coercive government. One of the ac- 
companiments of despotism is display, serving to over- 
awe the popular mind by manifestations of power of 
every kind. One manifestation is a gorgeous and 
highly-elaborated style of art — a style which sug- 
gests the thought of enormous cost and enormous 
labour, implying unlimited control over men. The 
earliest times show us this in the decorations of 
Egyptian tombs and temples, internally lined 
throughout with frescoes and externally covered with 
sculptured details of conquests; and the like traits 
may be seen in the remains of the Assyrian civiliza- 
tion. So was it in the past and is at present in all 

Eastern countries, where no form of rule is known 
18 265 



266 BARBARIC ART. 

but that of the autocrat. Dresses crusted over with 
gems and gold distinguish the ruler and his belong- 
ings, while his weapons and insignia of office are 
similarly weighted with costly decorations, and his 
gorgeously caparisoned horses and attendants add to 
his grandeur. If we pass to Europe in early days we 
see this display, implying possession of power, not in 
court paraphernalia only but in implements of war 
— suits of armour were elaborately inlaid with pre- 
cious metals, while the surfaces of swords, and in later 
days fire-arms, were covered with chasing. Every- 
where costliness was implied, and hence expense 
came to be the concomitant of high art.* Only with 
decline of the militant regime, and correlative growth 
of the industrial regime, did there begin to show 
itself that relative simplicity by which truly high art 
is characterized. A typical illustration of the change 
is furnished by the modern preference for uncoloured 
sculpture to the coloured sculpture and coloured wax- 
work common in medieval days and in still earlier 



And now, along with that re-barbarization ac- 
companying the movement towards Imperialism, we 

* A striking illustration comes to me just before this page 
goes to press. In The Times for March 7, 1902, the Japanese 
correspondent states that a pair of silver vases, 15 inches high, 
and inlaid with gold, to be presented by the Mikado to King 
Edward YII on the occasion of the Coronation, represent "seven 
years' work of 30 of the best Japanese artists." 



BARBARIC ART. 267 

see, curiously enough, a change of taste carrying us 
back to those types of art which were general in the 
days of coercive rule. First of all it is shown in that 
part of the social organization which everywhere and 
always adheres most strongly to the old — the ecclesi- 
astical. The internal walls of cathedrals, which dur- 
ing modern days were plain, have been in some cases 
re-covered with tawdry coloured patterns; and now 
the ecclesiastics, having got the upper hand, are lin- 
ing the dome of St. Paul's in the ancient style with 
mosaic pictures. Everywhere Protestant simplicity 
is being replaced by Catholic elaboration in the altar 
and its reredos, full of sculptured detail; and the 
vestments of ecclesiastics themselves have gone back 
to the old type — robes made weighty with glittering 
ornaments: all suggestive of medieval and Oriental 
pomp. 

A kindred reversion characterizes our art-peri- 
odicals. Many of the things they offer for admira- 
tion suggest, at first, that there is taking place a vio- 
lent reaction from the pursuit of the beautiful to the 
pursuit of the ugly; but contemplation proves that 
the ugly is usually the medieval. Here we see this or 
that artist's designs for country-houses and cottages, 
the merit of which is that they recall the buildings 
of past centuries. And elsewhere are views of in- 
teriors containing furniture utterly comfortless in 
make, but displaying one or other degree of antiquity 



268 BARBARIC ART. 

in style, and often archaic — often barbaric, that is. 
In many cases grace and beauty have been positively 
tabooed. 

The same retrogressive taste various other peri- 
odicals display. Besides archaic decoration we see, 
on the covers of magazines, a style of lettering dis- 
tinguished from styles prevailing a generation ago 
by its intentionally malformed letters, by the com- 
bining of letters of different sizes in the same word, 
and by other distortions reminding us of such as 
might be found in the nursery: the irregular draw- 
ings of children and those of barbarians being natu- 
rally akin. It may be remarked, too, that in books 
the titles are now frequently placed close to the top 
and even in one corner — a deliberate abandonment 
of anything like symmetry: not that abandonment 
of symmetry which desire for the picturesque sug- 
gests, but that abandonment of it which implies dis- 
regard of proportion — lack of that perception of fit- 
ness which the geometrical form of a book dictates. 
Along with this has to be named the reversion to 
18th century type, giving to numerous books now 
published the aspect of books published in Johnson's 
day. Nay, there has been even a more marked re- 
version, as witness the much-lauded typography in- 
troduced by the late Mr. William Morris, who took 
as his model the 1.5th century Eoman type, and even 
in part Gothic type, and who, in justifying one of his 



BARBARIC ART. 269 

usages, says — " This rule is never departed from in 
mediaeval books, written or printed." 

As displaying the process of re-barbarization in 
art carried still further, must be added the going back 
to hand-made paper, often specified in advertise- 
ments as a trait of superiority. And then the final 
abomination accompanying this, we have in the 
leaves with rough (" deckled ") edges. A trait alto- 
gether ugly and extremely inconvenient, impeding 
as it does the turning over of leaves, is named as an 
attraction by publishers, for no other reason than 
that it gratifies this feeling which re-barbarization 
everywhere discloses ! ISTay they go further. I learn 
from a paper-maker that " some publishers have the 
smooth edges [where the folding necessitates these] 
cut roughly with a blunt knife in order to imitate " 
" the natural ' deckle.' " 



VACCINATION. 

" When once you interfere with the order of Na- 
ture there is no knowing where the results will end," 
was the remark made in my presence by a distin- 
guished biologist. There immediately escaped from 
him an expression of vexation at his lack of reticence, 
for he saw the various uses I might make of the ad- 
mission. 

Jenner and his disciples have assumed that when 
the vaccine virus has passed through a patient's sys- 
tem he is safe, or comparatively safe, against small- 
pox, and that there the matter ends. I will not here 
say anything for or against this assumption.* I 
merely propose to show that there the matter does not 
end. The interference with the order of Nature has 
various sequences other than that counted upon. 
Some have been made known. 

A Parliamentary Eeturn issued in 1880 (No. 

* Except, indeed, by quoting the statement of a well-known 
man, Mr. Kegan Paul the publisher, respecting his own experi- 
ence. In his Memories (pp. 260-1) he says, respecting his small- 
pox when adult, "I had had small-pox when a child, in spite of 
vaccination, and had been vaccinated but a short time before. I 
am the third of my own immediate family who have had small- 
pox twice, and with whom vaccination has always taken." 
270 



VACCINATION. 271 

392) shows that comparing the quinquennial periods 
1847-1851 and 1874-1878 there was in the latter a 
diminution in the deaths from all causes of infants 
under one year old of 6,600 per million births per 
annum; while the mortality caused by eight speci- 
fied diseases, either directly communicable or exacer- 
bated by the effects of vaccination, increased from 
20,524 to 41,353 per million births per annum — 
more than double. It is clear that far more were 
killed by these other diseases than were saved from 
small-pox.* 

To the communication of diseases thus demon- 
strated, must be added accompanying effects. It is 
held that the immunity produced by vaccination im- 
plies some change in the components of the body: 
a necessary assumption. But now if the substances 
composing the body, solid or liquid or both, have 
been so modified as to leave them no longer liable to 
small-pox, is the modification otherwise inoperative % 
Will any one dare to say that it produces no further 
effect than that of shielding the patient from a par- 

* This was in the days of arm-to-arm vaccination, when medi- 
cal men were certain that other diseases (syphilis, for instance) 
could not be communicated through the vaccine virus. Any one 
who looks into the Transactions of the Epidemiological Society 
of some thirty years ago, will find that they were suddenly con- 
vinced to the contrary by a dreadful case of wholesale syphiliza- 
tion. In these days of calf -lymph vaccination such dangers are 
excluded : not that of bovine tuberculosis however. But I name 
the fact as showing what amount of faith is to be placed in medi- 
cal opinion. 



272 VACCINATION. 

ticular disease ? You cannot change the constitution 
in relation to one invading agent and leave it un- 
changed in regard to all other invading agents. 
What must the change be? There are cases of un- 
healthy persons in whom a serious disease, as typhoid 
fever, is followed by improved health. But these are 
not normal cases; if they were a healthy person 
would become more healthy by having a succession of 
diseases. Hence, as a constitution modified by vac- 
cination is not made more able to resist perturbing 
influences in general, it must be made less able. 
Heat and cold and wet and atmospheric changes tend 
ever to disturb the balance, as do also various foods, 
excessive exertion, mental strain. We have no means 
of measuring alterations in resisting power, and 
hence they commonly pass unremarked. There are, 
however, evidences of a general relative debility. 
Measles is a severer disease than it used to be, and 
deaths from it are very numerous. Influenza yields 
proof. Sixty years ago, when at long intervals an 
epidemic occurred, it seized but few, was not severe, 
and left no serious sequelae; now it is permanently 
established, affects multitudes in extreme forms, and 
often leaves damaged constitutions. The disease is 
the same, but there is less ability to withstand it. 

There are other significant facts. It is a familiar 
biological truth that the organs of sense and the teeth 
arise out of the dermal layer of the embryo. Hence 



VACCINATION. 273 

abnormalities affect all of them: blue-eyed cats are 
deaf and hairless dogs have imperfect teeth. (Ori- 
gin of Species, Chap. I.) The like holds of consti- 
tutional abnormalities caused by disease. Syphilis 
in its earlier stages is a skin-disease. When it is in- 
herited the effects are malformation of teeth and in 
later years iritis (inflammation of the iris). Kin- 
dred relations hold with other skin-diseases : instance 
the fact that scarlet fever is often accompanied by 
loosening of the teeth, and the fact that with measles 
often go disorders, sometimes temporary sometimes 
permanent, of both eyes and ears. May it not be 
thus with another skin-disease — that which vaccina- 
tion gives? If so, we have an explanation of the 
frightful degeneracy of teeth among young people in 
recent times ; and we need not wonder at the preva- 
lence of weak and defective eyes among them. Be 
these suggestions true or not, one thing is certain : — 
the assumption that vaccination changes the constitu- 
tion in relation to small-pox and does not otherwise 
change it is sheer folly.* 

* A high authority, Sir James Paget, in his Lectures (4th ed. 
p. 39) says: — "After the vaccine and other infectious or inocula- 
ble diseases, it is, most probably, not the tissues alone, but the 
blood as much or more than they, in which the altered state is 
maintained; and in many cases it would seem that, whatever 
materials are added to the blood, the stamp once impressed by 
one of these specific diseases is retained." Here is a distinct ad- 
mission, or rather assertion, that the constitution is changed. Is 
it changed for the better ? If not, it must be changed for the worse. 



PEKVEKTED HISTOBY. 

I believe it was a French king who, wishing to 
consult some historical work, called to his librarian: 
— " Bring me my liar." The characterization was 
startling but not undeserved. The more we look 
round at the world's affairs and the statements made 
about them by this or that class of people, the more 
we are impressed by the difficulty, and in some cases 
the impossibility, of getting at the essential facts. 

I am prompted to say this by an extremely grave 
perversion of history, known to comparatively few, 
which I am able to prove in the most positive manner 
— a perversion which, grave though it is, would, but 
for an unlikely incident, have been incorporated in 
all future accounts of the relations between England 
and the United States. 

Early in 1869 the unfriendly feeling between the 
two countries which had continued since the war of 
secession, was for a time much exacerbated. From 
the outset we had been reviled for not sympathizing 
with the North in its Anti-Slavery war with the 
South. It had been concluded that as consumers of 
274 



PERVERTED HISTORY. 275 

cotton our interests were with the South, and that we 
should necessarily, therefore, go with the South ; and 
in pursuance of this conclusion, orators and journal- 
ists had vied with one another in their condemna- 
tions of us. 

As foregoing pages have proved, I am not an un- 
qualified admirer of England and English doings; 
but I was indignant that when England had, at the 
outset, shown more sympathy for the Northern 
States than she had ever shown to any other people 
— had exhibited a unanimity of feeling unparalleled 
in respect of any political matter, domestic or for- 
eign — there should be perpetually vented upon her 
reproaches such as might fitly have been called forth 
by behaviour the reverse of that which she displayed. 
One result was that when, in 1869, the political hori- 
zon to the West was looking very dark, I was prompt- 
ed to show the Northerners how wrong they had been 
in supposing that there originally existed among us 
that unfriendliness to them which we subsequently 
displayed. 

I sent my secretary to the British Museum to 
look up the evidence contained in the London daily 
and weekly press, immediately before the outbreak 
of the war and immediately after. My remem- 
brance was absolutely verified. Extracts proved 
that with one accord our journals of all parties — 
Tory, Whig, Radical — condemned in strong terms 



276 PERVERTED HISTORY. 

the action of the South. There were denunciatory 
passages from the Times of Dec. 5 and 11, 1860, and 
Jan. 4, 1861; from the Daily News, Jan. 2, 1861; 
from the Morning Herald, Dec. 27, 1860 ; from the 
Morning Post, Dec. 5, 1860; from the Daily Tele- 
graph, Dec. 3, 1860; from the Morning Star, Nov. 
27, 1860; from the Express, Nov. 20, 1860; from 
the Sun, 'Nov. 19, 1860; from the Standard, Nov. 
24, 1860; from the Spectator, Dec. 1, 1860; and 
from the Saturday Review, Dec. 29, 1860. 

Even stronger condemnations were expressed 
after the declaration of war. Witness the Times of 
Jan. 18 and 19, 1861; the Daily News of Jan. 21; 
the Morning Post of Jan. 9 and 12 ; the Daily Tele- 
graph of Jan. 19 and 15 ; the Morning Herald of 
Jan. 28 ; the Morning Star of Jan. 15 ; the Sun of 
Jan. 19 ; the Globe of Jan. 14 and 18 ; the Standard 
of Jan. 19 and May 2; the Express of Jan. 24; the 
Spectator of Jan. 5 and 26; the Saturday Review 
of Jan. 12 and Feb. 2. Not a single expression of 
sympathy with the South was discovered. I heard 
afterwards that in one monthly magazine, Black- 
wood's, there was a dissentient note, and this was 
considered a disgrace. 

The above-dated extracts I embodied in a letter 
to my friend Professor Youmans, and requested him 
to publish it in the New York Tribune : hoping thus 
to mitigate American hostility. The letter was set 



PERVERTED HISTORY. 277 

up in the Tribune-o&ice and a proof sent to me by 
my friend, with a request to withdraw the letter. He 
said that adherents of mine who had seen it, were 
unanimous in thinking that it would do no good and 
would be mischievous by tying their hands. Though 
I had expressed indifference to any evil which might 
fall on me personally, I was, by this statement that no 
good would be done, induced to yield, and the letter was 
not published at that time. Some years afterwards, 
however, when the ill-feeling had diminished, the 
London correspondent of the Tribune, to whom I 
mentioned the matter, asked me to let him have the 
letter for publication. I did so and it eventually 
appeared. There was an accompanying leading arti- 
cle referring in a slighting way to the evidence it 
contained; and, as I gathered, though some effect 
was produced, it was but small. Demonstration fails 
to change established beliefs. 

Several motives have prompted this narrative. 
One is that though I have included in an appendix to 
my Autobiography a reproduction of the above-de- 
scribed letter to the Tribune, yet since most readers 
never look at appendices, the rectification it contains 
may have little effect. Hence I have decided to set 
forth here the circumstances under which the letter 
was written, and to give the dates of the newspapers 
containing the passages quoted in it. Strangely 
enough, even among ourselves the growth of the an- 



278 PERVERTED HISTORY. 

tagonism, caused by undeserved vilification of us, 
seems to have obliterated all recollection of the origi- 
nal concurrence. 

What must we think about historical statements 
at large? When twelve of England's chief newspa- 
pers, representing all parties, joined in a chorus of 
condemnation — when no newspaper was found which 
failed thus to join in reprobating the South — a con- 
clusive proof of sympathetic feeling with the North 
was given. Yet in the North this conclusive proof 
was followed by diatribes against our assumed sym- 
pathy with the South. If this extreme perversion was 
possible in the days of a cheap Press and easy com- 
munication, what was not possible in past days when 
the means of spreading information were smaller and 
the hatreds greater ? Beyond accounts of kings' 
reigns, of battles, and of incidents named in the 
chronicles of all the nations concerned, we have noth- 
ing to depend on but treaties made to be broken, de- 
spatches of corrupt and lying officials, gossiping let- 
ters of courtiers, and so forth. How from these ma- 
terials shall we distil the truth ? Judging from this 
recent case in which a grave misunderstanding be- 
tween two nations was caused by complete inversion 
of the evidence, we must say that nothing positive can 
be inferred from the mass of passions, prejudices, 
interests, superstitions which moved men in past 
times. 



PERVERTED HISTORY. 279 

The things that we can be certain of are happily 
the only things worth knowing. Through all these 
petitions, records, despatches, letters, &c, as well as 
through the laws that remain in force and those that 
have fallen into abeyance, there emerge numerous 
facts which there is no intention of telling — facts 
concerning the social classes, social organization, so- 
cial customs, arrangements, changes: there emerge 
the data for Sociology, to which History, as common- 
ly understood, is merely the handmaid. 



GRAMMAR. 

The reader must forgive me if I begin with some 
familiar facts and reflections. Without them my ar- 
gument would lose some of its effect. 

" Oh, father, have you caught any fishes % " ex- 
claims a little urchin as he rushes to the door. " Yes, 
my boy, but you should say — i Have you caught any 
fish ? ' " The boy followed the usual practice ; the 
father disregarded it. Curiously enough, within this 
same class of objects there are some in speaking of 
which the practice is recognized, and others in speak- 
ing of which it is ignored. In answer to inquiry 
one fisherman will say to another — " I've got some 
eels," but he will not say — " I've got some roaches." 
Familiarity with " sports " appears to encourage 
these irregularities, for similar ones happen in talk 
about game-birds. You may say " a brace of pheas- 
ants," but you may not say, " a brace of snipes " : 
here the singular must be used. Another instance 
was a few days ago brought to my notice by the 
words of a maid who announced the arrival of " two 

braces of grouse." 
280 



GRAMMAR. 281 

" Yes, these are exceptions," will be the comment 
made. Why exceptions % What is the authority for 
an exception % The answer is — Custom : custom has 
dictated that in these cases the rule ordinarily in- 
sisted on so rigidly shall be disregarded. Custom, 
then, is of higher authority than are grammatical 
rules. But this inevitable admission raises the ques- 
tion — Whence the authority of the rules \ To which 
the unavoidable reply is — Custom. If the authority 
for breaking rules is custom, and if no one can find 
an authority to which custom must yield, then the 
necessary conclusion is that custom both makes the 
rules and breaks the rules. Our modes of ordering 
our words to express our ideas can have no other 
origin. 

By way of making this conclusion clear to a 
young lady, I questioned her as follows : — 

" You know that in old English days there were 
no grammars: printing had not been invented, and 
sacred manuscripts in monasteries formed the only 
literature. In what manner do you suppose people 
spoke in those days ? " 

" I suppose they spoke anyhow." 

" By ( anyhow ' you mean ungrammatically ? " 

" Yes." 

" Through what process do you think a grammar 
came into existence? Was it by Act of Parlia- 
ment ? " 

19 



282 GRAMMAR. 

" I do not remember that history says so." 

" And even assuming that rules of speech were 
enacted, how in that case were they enforced ? 
There could not have been inspectors in families and 
public places to see that people obeyed ! " 

" No." 

" What other authority, then, imposed grammat- 
ical rules ? If a government could not have enforced 
its rules, supposing it to have made them, what other 
body, or what individual, could have done it ? And 
if rules did not arise by dictation, how did they 
arise % " 

" Well, I suppose some one jotted down notes 
concerning the ways in which he heard people put 
their words together, and afterwards arranged his 
notes into a book." 

" In that case, then, it seems that our modes of 
speech were not determined by grammatical rules, 
but grammatical rules were determined by our modes 
of speech — were nothing more than statements of 
the customs among those superior people who gave 
the law to the community in all other things." 

It is strange that notwithstanding the obvious- 
ness of this conclusion, there should exist a vague 
idea that rules of grammar have some supreme au- 
thority otherwise derived; and it is the more re- 
markable since nowadays the description of a savage 
tribe usually contains some account of its language 



GRAMMAR. 283 

and its grammar : a grammar which could not possi- 
bly have been artificially imposed, and which must 
therefore have originated by custom. 

Even stranger is it to find that in past times a 
still more extreme view of grammatical authority 
was held by an acute observer and reasoner. Putting 
aside his bigotry, political and religious, Dr. Johnson 
was a thinker of much penetration; and yet, con- 
cerning Shakespeare's classical culture, we read in 
BoswelPs Life : — " • I never engaged in this con- 
troversy/ said Johnson, ' I always said Shakespeare 
had Latin enough to grammaticize his English.' " 
Whence it seems that in Johnson's opinion the cor- 
rect writing of English implied, not only the usual 
grammatical discipline, but also some knowledge of 
another language ! 

Were I asked to name an example of the post hoc 
propter hoc fallacy more prevalent than any other, 
I should single out the one implied in this current 
belief that correctness in speech depends on knowl- 
edge of grammar. Scarcely any one thinks of calling 
it in question, and the mere hint of a doubt will cause 
astonishment. 

If we go back to the days before schools for the 
people were established, when there were no compli- 
cating circumstances, the relation between grammar- 
lessons and correct speech seemed incontestable. 



284 GRAMMAR. 

Here, on the one hand, were the upper and middle 
classes who, almost without exception, had been 
taught at school the rules set forth in grammars, and 
who most of them spoke tolerably good English. 
Here, on the other hand, were the unschooled masses 
who, save in rare cases, had not been told how to put 
their words together rightly, and who universally 
spoke bad English. How, then, was it possible to 
question the connexion between grammar-lessons and 
correct speech ? 

The reply is simple. The essential factor passed 
unnoticed. Those who, belonging to the upper 
classes, had at school been taught the right ways of 
combining their words, had also, day by day through- 
out their lives, heard words rightly combined by their 
elders; and had, by imitation, been led into using 
right modes of combination themselves. Contrari- 
wise, those brought up among labouring people, ac- 
customed perpetually to hearing modes of speech 
which, judged by the upper-class standard, were in- 
correct, acquired by imitation these incorrect modes 
of speech. In both cases children learned the mean- 
ings of words from the conversations of adults. In 
both cases they similarly learned the pronunciations 
of words. And simultaneously they learned how to 
arrange and inflect words to express the ideas arising 
from moment to moment. Any other conclusion is 
indeed absurd. It assumes that while right meanings 



GRAMMAR. 285 

of words and right pronunciations of words, may be 
learned by listening, right co-ordination of them can- 
not be so learned. 

More than this may be said. There are reasons 
for the belief that the learning of grammatical rules 
cannot replace the daily listening to correct speech, 
and that the habits gained from example override the 
effects of teaching. Two instances showing this, 
taken respectively from little-cultured ranks and 
highly-cultured ranks, will suffice. 

A maid-servant of mine, admirable in character 
and efficiency, makes every minute one or other error 
in speech. " I'll ast him, Sir " ; "I see it when I 
come " ; "I think cook have some " ; "I always 
leaves them on the dressing table " ; are samples of 
her English. Sent to school in early years she con- 
tinued to attend till she was sixteen, and during the 
last six years went through the usual grammar-les- 
sons. Evidently these lessons did nothing towards 
correcting those defective modes of expression which 
she acquired from family talk and conversations with 
friends. Practically, example was everything and 
precept nothing. 

I pass now to the other extreme. A fugitive essay 
by a gentleman of university culture, who took hon- 
ours, who, himself a poet, is a translator of Greek 
poetry, began with the words — " Turning over one's 



286 GRAMMAR. 

books the other day I found &c." Whether the sen- 
tence thus commenced had been seen by him in proof, 
I cannot say ; but even supposing that it had not, we 
have the remarkable fact that, both in thinking and 
in writing, there occurred this collocation of words. 
Clearly it is impossible to ascribe the fault of con- 
struction to ignorance. It must be ascribed to some 
other cause, and I suspect the cause was a family 
habit. My reason is that an uncle of his, also a uni- 
versity man of mark and a classical professor, had 
more than once in conversation surprised me by 
making similar changes from the impersonal to the 
personal, or vice versa; and I think it not unlike- 
ly that, in a preceding generation, careless talk 
over the table among seniors had often exemplified 
this form of speech, and had impressed the ten- 
dency to it on the minds of descendants — a tendency 
which showed its effect when self-criticism was not 
active. 

A more remarkable instance of kindred nature 
may be added. A review of the Letters of Prof. 
Jowett (a supplement to the Life and Letters) drew 
my attention to a passage in them concerning myself. 
After looking at this passage I glanced over an ad- 
jacent page, and there found the following two sen- 
tences : — " I am afraid that you will never get on if 
you do not assume a more Christian temper. I think 
as you get older that life is too short to allow a per- 



GRAMMAR. 287 

son to indulge all his aversions." The second of 
these sentences contains two conspicuous faults of 
construction. The word " you " as it occurs in the 
first sentence is applied personally, but in the second 
sentence, where it recurs in such a manner as to 
imply that its meaning is the same, its meaning is 
different. It is no longer addressed directly to his 
correspondent, but is used in reference to men at 
large. And then comes the transformation of the 
''"you " into " a person " : the meaning, which was at 
first of individual application, and then passed into 
the ambiguous, becomes now distinctly general. Be- 
yond this, the first line of the sentence, if rigorously 
interpreted, proves to be nonsense. " I think as you 
get older that life &c." literally means that Jowett 
thinks so-and-so as his correspondent gets older. To 
convey the meaning intended the word " that " must 
be transferred so as to make the clause read: — "I 
think that as you get older life &c." Thus it ap- 
pears that fifty years spent almost wholly in linguis- 
tic studies — in teaching Greek and translating Plato 
— years throughout which niceties of expression 
were daily studied, did not guarantee correctness 
of expression — did not exclude grammatical errors. 
Linguistic discipline does not ensure coherence of 
thought; and without coherence of thought mistakes 
of the kind above exemplified are sure to be 
made. 



288 GRAMMAR. 

" But surely you do not mean to say that knowl- 
edge of grammar is superfluous ? You will not con- 
tend that English may be written as correctly by one 
who has never been taught its rules as by one who has 
been taught them ? " My response may fitly be a 
piece of personal history. 

If there be such a thing as pre-natal good fortune, 
I may say that I was very fortunate in having a ra- 
tional man for a father — not a man who accepted all 
the opinions which were current and who conformed 
to every established usage, but one who judged for 
himself, and diverged in various ways from the ideas 
and practices of those around. About education, 
more especially, he held views unlike the ordinary 
ones; as witness his little work Inventional Geom- 
etry, and by his independent thinking he was 
prompted into other deviations from routine, as wit- 
ness his Lucid Shorthand. Lest mental strain should 
prove injurious to me, he interdicted some of the 
studies which children commonly enter on at school: 
English history, for example, was one omitted at his 
request. Whether any views he held respecting the 
value of grammar prompted him, or whether he 
thought that grammar-lessons might well be post- 
poned, I do not know; but grammar-lessons were, 
by his direction, dispensed with. During youth 
there was no attempt to acquire the omitted knowl- 
edge, nor did I acquire it during mature years; so 



GRAMMAR. 289 

that down to the present hour I remain ignorant oJ 
those authoritative directions for writing English 
which grammars contain. I cannot repeat a single 
rule of syntax as given in books, and were it not that 
the context has shown me the interpretation of the 
word when I have met with it in reading, I should 
not know what syntax means. " But did you not 
gain a knowledge of syntax at large from the Latin 
grammar or the Greek grammar ? " jSTo. I had a 
strong aversion to linguistic studies of every kind. 
My father disapproved of punishment and my school- 
master was not allowed to inflict it. In the absence 
of punishment my lessons in Latin grammar were 
never properly learned, and my progress was so slow 
that I did not master all the conjugations. Still 
smaller was the knowledge of Greek grammar which 
I acquired. In neither case did I reach that division 
which treats of the structure of sentences. At length, 
when I was about 15, and under the tuition of my 
uncle, a clergyman, who wished that I should follow 
in his steps, it became manifest that my repugnance 
was insurmountable, and the attempts to teach me 
Latin and Greek were abandoned. Of the French 
grammar the same has to be said — I never reached 
the end of the conjugations. Thus neither directly 
nor indirectly have I received any of that discipline 
which is supposed to be an indispensable means of 
insuring correctness of expression. 



290 GRAMMAR. 

What has been the result ? Doubtless in my 
works errors of construction are here and there to be 
found ; but then I have met with no works in which 
errors of construction are not to be found. It is a 
question of frequency. If comparisons show that my 
books contain more grammatical defects than the 
books of those who have had the guidance of authori- 
tative rules in the ordering of their words, there 
will be some evidence that my ignorance of syntax, 
as it is set forth in grammars, has been detrimental. 

As already implied, one who is clear-headed and 
who throughout early life has daily heard correct 
speech from those around, will speak correctly. But 
non-fulfilment of either condition will entail incor- 
rectness. If his thoughts are so indistinct that he 
does not perceive clearly the relations among the ele- 
ments of a statement he is making, or if throughout 
boyhood and youth he has perpetually heard words 
misused by parents and others, the learning of gram- 
matical rules will not prevent him from making 
blunders. 

Of course grammar should have a place in a com- 
plete curriculum. That place, however, should be 
not at the beginning but at the end. There runs 
throughout education at large the pestilent practice 
of starting with the abstract and ending with the 
concrete — a practice utterly at variance with the 
course of mental development, which starts with the 



GRAMMAR. 291 

concrete and ends with the abstract. The forcing \ 
grammar-lessons on children affords perhaps the > 
most glaring illustration. But those whose mental 
culture is carried to a high stage may properly enter 
upon the study of grammar as a preliminary to the 
study of logic. Both concern the co-ordination of the 
ideas which constitute coherent thinking. Grammar 
deals with the normal connexions among the compo- 
nent elements of a proposition. Logic deals with the 
normal connexions among the component proposi- 
tions of an argument.* 

* If, as a criticism on the above personal statement, any should 
contend that, in the absence of the ordinary grammatical disci- 
pline, such correctness of construction as my writing exhibits has 
been achieved only by special care, he may assure himself to the 
contrary by referring to a chapter entitled "Conciliation," ap- 
pended to Part I of the Principles of Ethics. For reasons ex- 
plained in the preliminary note, that chapter is there printed 
verbatim from the manuscript of the shorthand-writer to whom 
it was dictated as a rough draft. Nothing has been done to re- 
move from it defects of any kind. 



WHAT SHOULD THE SCEPTIC SAY TO 
BELIEVEKS ? 

To one who has relinquished the creed of his 
fathers there comes from time to time the question 
— What shall I say to those who believe as of old? 
To answer is difficult, since the reasons for and against 
this or that line of conduct are many and variable. 
Of course sincerity must be the dominant guide ; but 
sincerity has sundry forms. There is an aggressive 
sincerity which seizes every occasion for trying to 
change others' views. There is a sincerity, less ag- 
gressive, which is ready to discuss, and to utter ad- 
verse beliefs candidly. There is a sincerity which 
enters with reluctance into arguments that disclose 
changed convictions. And there is a sincerity which 
is silent and even shuns the utterance of opinions at 
variance with those that are current. What attitude 
to take under these or those conditions is often a 
query not to be answered in a satisfactory way. 

In many cases the Agnostic is misled by the as- 
sumption that a secular creed may with advantage 
forthwith replace the creed distinguished as sacred. 
292 



WHAT SHOULD THE SCEPTIC SAY TO BELIEVERS? 293 

That right guidance may be furnished by a system of 
natural ethics, is a belief usually followed by the cor- 
ollary that it needs only to develop such a system 
and the required self-control will result. But calm 
contemplation of men's natures and doings dissipates 
this corollary. It assumes a general intelligence ca- 
pable of seeing the beneficial outcome of certain 
modes of conduct currently recognized as right, and 
the evil outcome of opposite modes of conduct; and 
it assumes that, having perceived the good results of 
this kind and the bad results of that kind, men will 
adopt the one and reject the other. But neither as- 
sumption is true. The average intellect can not grasp 
a demonstration, even when the matter is concrete, 
and still less when the matter is abstract. It cannot 
bear in mind the successive propositions but collapses 
under the weight of them before reaching the con- 
clusion. Dogmatic teaching is alone effective with 
such, and even this often fails. The dogma " Hon- 
esty is the best policy," is commonly inoperative on 
the thief, since he always expects to escape detection. 
Further, the hope that average men may be swayed 
by the contemplation of advantage to society is utter- 
ly Utopian. In the minds of those who form the 
slum-population and most of those immediately above 
them, will arise the thought — " I don't care a damn 
for society." And at the other end of the social scale, 
among those whose lives alternate between club-rooms 



294 WHAT SHOULD THE SCEPTIC SAY TO BELIEVERS? 

and game-preserves, there will arise, if not so coarse- 
ly expressed a thought, yet the thought — " Society as 
it is, serves my purpose very well, and that's enough 
for me." Ethical teaching, however conclusive, has 
no effect on natures which have made little approach 
towards harmony with it. Only the few who are in 
a measure organically moral, will benefit by its in- 
junctions; reinforcing those beliefs which their con- 
duct ordinarily betrays. Thus the Agnostic who 
thinks he can provide forthwith adequate guidance 
by setting forth a natural code of right conduct, duly 
illustrated, is under an illusion. By all means let 
us have a tracing down of morals to the laws of life, 
individual and social, and a continual emphasizing 
of the truths reached ; but it must go along with the 
understanding that only as the discipline of a peace- 
ful social life slowly remoulds men's natures, will 
appreciable effects be produced. 

" Surely this amounts to saying that the old creed 
should be left in possession % Surely if the truths of 
natural ethics will, for the present at least, be unin- 
fluential, those equivalent truths which have a reli- 
gious sanction should be perpetually preached ? Sure- 
ly it is wrong to shake confidence in a theology which 
now exercises control over men ? " The reply is that 
unfortunately the religious creed appears to be 
scarcely more operative than the ethical creed would 
be. It needs but to glance over the world and con- 



WHAT SHOULD THE SCEPTIC SAY TO BELIEVERS? 295 

template the doings of Christians everywhere, to be 
amazed at the ineffectiveness of the current theology. 
Or it needs only to look back over past centuries at 
the iniquities alike of populace, nobles, kings, and 
popes, to perceive an almost incomprehensible futil- 
ity of the beliefs everywhere held and perpetually 
insisted upon: horrors like those which Dante de- 
scribed notwithstanding. If this lack of results be 
ascribed to the sale of indulgences and the assumed 
priestly power of absolution, then a glance at the 
condition of England after Protestantism had been 
established, proves that where such perverting influ- 
ences were inoperative, the fear of hell and the hope 
of heaven influenced men's actions in an incredibly 
small degree. These threats and promises of punish- 
ments and rewards, appear in most cases to have done 
little more to guide men's conduct than would be 
done by a series of propositions showing that moral 
conduct is, in the end, beneficial alike individually 
and socially. Something rudely analogous to the 
law in the physical world that attraction varies in- 
versely as the square of the distance, seems to hold 
in the moral world ; so that proximate pleasures and 
pains, even trifling, influence actions more than im- 
measurably greater pleasures and pains that are re- 
mote. In a small way we see this in the conduct of 
the toper, who yields to the promise of instant grati- 
fication from more drink, notwithstanding the pros- 



296 WHAT SHOULD THE SCEPTIC SAY TO BELIEVERS? 

pect of to-morrow's headache and sickness joined 
with domestic dissension and public discredit. Dis- 
tant evils must be vividly represented before they 
can counter-balance enjoyments that are immediate; 
and in most people the representative faculty is fee- 
ble. Here and there are some of superior natures on 
whom the religious sanctions and reprobations so far 
reinforce natural promptings as to have beneficial 
effects. But if we recall the transgressions of adul- 
terating tradesmen, bribed agents, dishonest lawyers, 
corrupt financiers, &c, we see that the alternative 
prospects of eternal torture and eternal bliss sway 
them but little. So that ill-grounded as may be the 
Agnostic's hope that a system of natural ethics will at 
once yield good guidance, it must not be inferred that 
endeavours to substitute such a system for the super- 
natural system with its penalties and rewards, will 
injure the average of men — may indeed benefit them, 
by showing the agreement between the naturally de- 
rived sanctions and most of those supposed to be su- 
pernaturally derived. 

Moreover there are cases presenting to the Ag- 
nostic positive reasons for expressing his changed 
beliefs. For while on the great mass of people the 
current creed appears to be beneficially operative to a 
very small degree if at all, there are not a few on 
whom it is disastrously operative, causing by its 
threats great misery. To some who are sensitive and 



WHAT SHOULD THE SCEPTIC SAY TO BELIEVERS? 297 

have active imaginations the prospect of eternal tor- 
ture comes home with terrible effect. Numbers of 
them continue throughout life to be troubled about 
their future fates ; and in old age, when flagging vital- 
ity brings more or less mental depression, this depres- 
sion takes the shape of fears concerning endless pun- 
ishment to be presently borne. In past times, when 
" the wrath to come " was more strongly emphasized 
than now, horrible conceptions must have brought 
wretchedness to not a few; and even at present the 
credulous to whom there is given some work like one 
I have in hand, Hell opened to Christians, giving, 
along with its denunciations, vivid representations of 
various tortures, are sure to have days and nights 
filled with ideas of sufferings without end* To all 
such the man who has rejected this dreadful creed 
may fitly give reasons for doing the like: pointing 
out the blasphemy of supposing that the Power mani- 
fested in fifty million suns with their attendant 
worlds, has a nature which in a human being we 
should shrink from with horror. 

On the other hand we meet with those who, more 
fortunately dispositioned, dwell rather upon the 
promised future happiness; and, by the hope of it, 
are consoled under the evils they have to bear. The 
prospect of heaven makes life tolerable to many who 

* For some striking illustrations see Lecky's History of Eng- 
land in the Eighteenth Century, vol. iii., pp. 77-86. 
20 



298 WHAT SHOULD THE SCEPTIC SAY TO BELIEVERS? 

would else find it intolerable. In some whose shat- 
tered constitutions and perpetual pains, caused per- 
haps by undue efforts for the benefit of dependents, 
the daily thought of a compensating future is the 
sole assuaging consciousness. Others there are who, 
borne down in spirit by some grave misunderstand- 
ing, look forward to a time when everything will be 
made clear and their grief changed into joy. Con- 
stant ill-treatment from a domestic tyrant brings to 
not a few unceasing miseries, which are mitigated 
only by the belief that they will hereafter give place 
to a state of bliss. And there are many who stagger 
on under the exhausting burden of daily duties, ful- 
filled without thanks and without sympathy, who are 
enabled to bear their ills by the conviction that after 
this life will come a life free from pains and weari- 
ness. Nothing but evil can follow a change in the 
creed of such; and unless cruelly thoughtless the Ag- 
nostic will carefully shun discussion of religious sub- 
jects with them. 

What course to take is thus, as said at first, a 
question to be answered only after consideration of 
the special circumstances. The many who are reck- 
less even of themselves and brutally regardless of 
human welfare, may be passed by; unless, indeed, 
some good may be done by proving that there are 
natural penalties which in large measure coincide 
with alleged supernatural penalties. On the other 



WHAT SHOULD THE SCEPTIC SAY TO BELIEVERS? 299 

hand those on whom fears of eternal punishment 
weigh heavily, may fitly be shown that merciless as is 
the Cosmic process worked out by an Unknown Pow- 
er, yet vengeance is nowhere to be found in it. 
Meanwhile, sympathy commands silence towards all 
who, suffering under the ills of life, derive comfort 
from their creed. While it forbids the dropping of 
hints that may shake their faiths, it suggests the eva- 
sion of questions which cannot be discussed without 
unsettling their hopes. 



ULTIMATE QUESTIONS. 

Old people must have many reflections in com- 
mon. Doubtless one which I have now in mind is very 
familiar. For years past, when watching the unfold- 
ing buds in the Spring there has arisen the thought — 
Shall I ever again see the buds unfold ? Shall I ever 
again be awakened at dawn by the song of the 
thrush ? Now that the end is not likely to be long 
postponed, there results an increasing tendency to 
meditate upon ultimate questions. 

It is commonly supposed that those who have re- 
linquished the creed of Christendom occupy them- 
selves exclusively with material interests and mate- 
rial activities — thinking nothing of the How and the 
Why, of the Whence and the Whither. It may be 
so with some of the uncultured, but it is certainly not 
so with many of the cultured. In the minds of those 
intimately known to me, the " riddle of existence " 
fills spaces far larger than the current conception 
fills in the minds of men in general. 

After studying primitive beliefs, and finding that 
there is no origin for the idea of an after-life save 
300 



ULTIMATE QUESTIONS. 301 

the conclusion which the savage draws from the no- 
tion suggested by dreams, of a wandering double 
which comes back on awaking and which goes away 
for an indefinite time at death; and after contem- 
plating the inscrutable relation between brain and 
consciousness, and finding that we can get no evi- 
dence of the existence of the last without the activity 
of the first, we seem obliged to relinquish the thought 
that consciousness continues after physical organiza- 
tion has become inactive. 

But it seems a strange and repugnant conclusion 
that with the cessation of consciousness at death, 
there ceases to be any knowledge of having existed. 
With his last breath it becomes to each the same 
thing as though he had never lived. 

And then the consciousness itself — what is it 
during the time that it continues? And what be- 
comes of it when it ends ? We can only infer that 
it is a specialized and individualized form of that 
Infinite and Eternal Energy which transcends both 
our knowledge and our imagination; and that at 
death its elements lapse into the Infinite and Eternal 
Energy whence they were derived. 

Concerning the outer world as concerning the 
inner world, those who have not satisfied themselves 
with traditional explanations, continually have 
thrust upon them the same questions — trite ques- 



302 ULTIMATE QUESTIONS. 

tions concerning the origin, meaning, and purpose, 
alike of the Universe as a whole and of all its living 
contents, down to the microscopic forms of which 
earth, air, and water are full. On the Agnostic 
these questions are continually forced; and continu- 
ally he sees the futility of all efforts to find consist- 
ent answers to them. 

There is one aspect of the Great Enigma to which 
little attention seems given, but which has of late 
years more frequently impressed me. I refer not to 
the problems which all concrete existences, from suns 
down to microbes, present, but to those presented by 
the universal form under which these exist — the phe- 
nomena of Space. 

In youth we pass by without surprise the geomet- 
rical truths set down in our Euclids. It suffices to 
learn that in a right-angled triangle the square of the 
hypothenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the 
other two sides: it is demonstrable, and that is 
enough. Concerning the multitudes of remarkable 
relations among lines and among spaces very few 
ever ask — Why are they so ? Perhaps the question 
may in later years be raised, as it has been in myself, 
by some of the more conspicuously marvellous truths 
now grouped under the title of " the Geometry of 
Position. " Many of these are so astounding that but 
for the presence of ocular proof they would be in- 
credible ; and by their marvellousness, as well as by 



ULTIMATE QUESTIONS. 303 

their beauty, they serve, in some minds at least, to 
raise the unanswerable question — How come there to 
exist among the parts of this seemingly-structureless 
vacancy we call Space, these strange relations ? How 
does it happen that the blank form of things presents 
us with truths as incomprehensible as do the things it 
contains % 

Beyond the reach of our intelligence as are the 
mysteries of the objects known by our senses, those 
presented in this universal matrix are, if we may so 
say, still further beyond the reach of our intelli- 
gence ; for whereas those of the one kind may be, and 
are, thought of by many as explicable on the hypoth- 
esis of Creation, and by the rest on the hypothesis of 
Evolution, those of the other kind cannot by either be 
regarded as thus explicable. Theist and Agnostic 
must agree in recognizing the properties of Space as 
inherent, eternal, uncreated — as anteceding all crea- 
tion, if creation has taken place, and all evolution, if 
evolution has taken place. 

Hence, could we penetrate the mysteries of exist- 
ence, there would remain still more transcendent 
mysteries. That which can be thought of neither as 
made nor evolved presents us with facts the origin of 
which is even more remote from conceivability than 
is the origin of the facts presented by visible and 
tangible things. It is impossible to imagine how 
there came to exist the marvellous space-relations re- 



304 ULTIMATE QUESTIONS. 

f erred to above. We are obliged to recognize these 
as having belonged to Space from all eternity. 

And then comes the thought of this universal ma- 
trix itself, anteceding alike creation or evolution, 
whichever be assumed, and infinitely transcending 
both, alike in extent and duration; since both, if 
conceived at all, must be conceived as having had- 
beginnings, while Space had no beginning. The 
thought of this blank form of existence which, ex- 
plored in all directions as far as imagination can 
reach, has, beyond that, an unexplored region com- 
pared with which the part which imagination has 
traversed is but infinitesimal — the thought of a Space 
compared with which our immeasurable sidereal sys- 
tem dwindles to a point, is a thought too overwhelm- 
ing to be dwelt upon. Of late years the conscious- 
ness that without origin or cause infinite Space has 
ever existed and must ever exist, produces in me a 
feeling from which I shrink. 



APPENDIX. 



APPENDIX. 



SOME EXPERIENCES OP CRITICISM. 

Five and twenty years ago, when leaving home 
for my usual autumn sojourn in Scotland, and when 
at a loss how profitably to occupy my secretary dur- 
ing my absence, I bethought me that he might as well 
collect a number of salient passages from reviews of 
my books : the prompting motive being that should 
there come a time when all other work was done, I 
might put these sample extracts in order and leave 
them for the instruction of future readers. The 
memoranda he brought together, tied up and put 
away, have during this long interval been almost for- 
gotten, and only recently, when there arose the 
thought of carrying out my original intention, did I 
take steps to verify and improve the presentation. 

Of course to give an account of press-notices at 

large would be out of the question. In early days 

as in late days there was here blame and there praise, 

the latter usually tepid though sometimes warm; but 

the reader was left with nothing but the vaguest idea 

307 



308 FACTS AND COMMENTS. 

of the leading conceptions set forth. Noting this 
general fact, which usually holds of other books as 
of my own, I will begin by giving a few opinions 
extracted from literary periodicals which flourished 
in the fifties, and the last of which survived until 
after 1860. A reviewer of Essays, &c, Yol. I, 
says : — 

"In the first place, their pedantry of expression exceeds all 
bounds. * * * * It would be not too severe to term the 
rhetoric of these essays as — stilted slipshod" — The Press, May 
15, 1858. 

"Well, we have heard him described as a 'general writer,' 
and that was not so bad a definition ; but there is one better : 
subtract Auguste Comte from Buckle, the remainder is Herbert 
Spencer." — The Parthenon, August 9, 1862. 

"But he has no genius, no originality; is incapable of 
thought lofty, profound, or comprehensive. * * * * We 
are at a loss to know why this volume has received the pom- 
pous title of ' First Principles.' It is really a bundle of psy- 
chological crotchets, dragged by the old rope of French mate- 
rialism along a desert of scientific aridities." — The Critic, July 
15, 1862. 

Before passing to English criticisms of a later date 

it will be convenient here to quote some of American 

origin. Along with judgments on my other books 

at that time published, the North American Review 

for April 1865, gives on p. 468 an expression of 

opinion concerning the Classification of the Sciences. 

In it the reviewer — 

" finds nothing deserving attention . . . except bad criti- 
cism, a perverted terminology, and fanciful discriminations." 



APPENDIX. 309 

"With this let me join the verdict of the Princetown 
Review for Sept. 1880, on the Study of Sociology: — 

"Many of them [examples of difficulties] are offensive to 
the taste. Not a few of them are indecent in their suggestions, 
and are positively flippant if not blasphemous in their treat- 
ment of sacred objects " (p. 282). 

" Of this chapter on the ' Theological Bias' we have only 
to say, as of many passages scattered through the volume, that 
it is difficult to determine whether it gives more decided evi- 
dence of ignorance, narrowness, conceit, or virulence " (p. 291). 

Perhaps of American judgments the one which, 
to many persons, will seem at variance with the facts 
in the extremest degree, is one published in The New 
Englander for April, 1871: — 

" Indeed we think that the most serious defect of Spencer, 
both as a reasoner and expounder, is that he disdains to develop 
and substantiate his views from their elementary constituents, 
and in their fundamental assumptions. * * * * His doc- 
trine of evolution by differentiation and integration is assumed 
to be universal and all -sufficing, but is not proved either by 
Induction or Deduction." 

I return now to opinions expressed by English 
critics. During a long period the leading organs of 
what Mr. Matthew Arnold called British Philistinism 
let my books pass unnoticed. It was not until Octo- 
ber 1873, that the Quarterly Review, twenty three 
years after the publication of my first work, had an 
article criticizing the earlier volumes of the " Syn- 
thetic Philosophy." The tone of it was in large 
measure appreciative, but the general estimate may 



310 FACTS AND COMMENTS. 

be judged from the summary, which contained among 
others the following verdicts: — 

"7. It takes no cognisance of our perceptions of truth, 
goodness, and beauty, as such, nor of our apprehension of the 
relatedness of relations. 

" 8. It is absolutely fatal to every germ of morality. 

11 9. It entirely negatives every form of religion. 

"10. It entirely stultifies itself by proclaiming its own un- 
truth, as included in its assertion that all our knowledge is but 
phenomenal and relative." 

Ten years afterwards, that is, twenty four years 
after the " Synthetic Philosophy " had begun to ap- 
pear, and thirty four years after the publication of 
Social Statics had made me known as a philosophical 
writer, the Edinburgh Review honoured me by an ar- 
ticle. The quality of it may be judged from the 
extract which here follows: — 

1 ' This is nothing but a philosophy of epithets and phrases, 
introduced and carried on with an unrivalled solemnity and 
affectation of precision of style, concealing the loosest reason- 
ing and the haziest indefiniteness on every point except the 
bare dogmatic negation of any ' knowable ' or knowing author 
of the universe ; which of course is the reason why this absurd 
pretence of a philosophy has obtained the admiration of a mul- 
titude of people." (January, 1884, Vol. CLIX, p. 81.) * 

Along with this, though considerably earlier in 
date, I may fitly associate the verdict of a periodical 

* My friends and others were amused by the way in which I 
signified my opinion of this Edinburgh reviewer. A new edition 
of First Principles was about to be published. I have persist- 
ently eschewed the practice of quoting press-opinions: adver- 
tisements of my books have always been free from them. But 



APPENDIX. 311 

of representative character widely unlike as a class- 
organ, which was equally contemptuous. In The 
Catholic World for February, 1872, it was said that — 

Mr. Spencer "has made a sad mistake in attempting to be 
a philosopher, for he lacks entirely the ingegno Jilosqfico and we 
have not discovered a single trace of a philosophic principle, 
thought, or conception in any or all of his several works. 
* * * * ^ e f ee i that some apology is due our readers for 
soliciting their attention to anything so absurd as Herbert 
Spencer's New System of Philosophy " (pp. 633, 645). 

I have reserved to the last, without regard to their 
dates but because of their significance, two examples 
of opinions from two weekly organs of sententious 
criticism — the Spectator and Saturday Review: 
organs considered especially trustworthy as being 
written and controlled by capable and conscientious 
men. The first is a review of First Principles from 
the Spectator for August 30, 1862, when Mr. Kichard 
Hutton was the literary editor, and is given in full. 
It was not among those dignified as reviews proper; 
it appeared under the head of " Current Literature " 
in those appended pages set up in small type, where 

here was an occasion for making an exception. I directed my 
publishers to send advertisements of this new edition to six of 
the leading weekly papers and to six daily papers, and to append 
to each of them the above-quoted sentence from the Edinburgh 
Review. A further step I took was to forward a copy of one of 
these papers, The Athenaeum, to the editor of the Keview, mark- 
ing the advertisement, and sending also another marked copy to 
be forwarded to the writer of the article. 



312 FACTS AND COMMENTS. 

are grouped brief notices of ephemeral works and 
works considered of no significance. 

"Mr. Herbert Spencer has conceived the original idea of 
issuing in periodical parts a connected series of works which, 
when complete, will embody a compendious system of philoso- 
phy. The first volume of this series, treating of First Principles, 
is now before us. It consists of six periodical numbers, and is 
divided into two parts. The first of these is devoted to the 
consideration of 'The Unknowable,' and arrives at the satis- 
factory conclusion that ' in the united belief in an Absolute 
that transcends, not only human knowledge, but human con- 
ception, lies the only possible reconciliation of Science and Re- 
ligion.' The second part discusses the 'Laws of the Know- 
able,' and contains 'a statement of the ultimate principles 
discernible throughout all manifestations of the Absolute ; those 
highest generalizations now being disclosed by science which 
are severally true, not of one class of phenomena, but of all 
classes of phenomena — and which are thus the keys to all classes 
of phenomena.' Mr. Spencer tells us that the application of 
these First Principles to Inorganic Nature should, in strict 
logical sequence, be the next subject for consideration; but, as 
this is a comparatively unimportant portion of his very exten- 
sive scheme, he has resolved to pass it over in silence, and pro- 
ceed at once to the discussion of the Principles of Biology, to 
which the second and third volumes of his series will be de- 
voted. Next will come the Principles of Psychology, the com- 
plete enunciation of which will also require two volumes ; then 
the Principles of Sociology, which cannot be satisfactorily dis- 
posed of in less than three ; and finally, the Principles of Moral- 
ity, for the establishment of which two volumes will, it is 
hoped, be found to afford sufficient space. After this brief 
summary of Mr. Spencer's plan, it is probable that the reader 
will have no hesitation in endorsing his admission that his 
scheme is, to say the least of it, a very extensive one. As a 
set-off against this obvious remark, our author urges that an 
exhaustive treatment of each topic is not intended ; and further 



APPENDIX. 313 

points out that the section devoted to the Principles of Psy- 
chology is already, in great part, completed. We do not wish 
to cast the slightest doubt upon Mr. Spencer's ability to carry 
out his colossal design in a perfectly satisfactory manner; but, 
whatever may be the result of his attempt, he will have at least 
the consolation of knowing that no one can deny it to belong 
to that class in which not even failure itself is entirely unac- 
companied by glory." 



The tacit valuation of the book may be further 
judged from the fact that it was preceded by a notice 
of the second edition of The Engineer's, Millwright's 
and Machinist's Practical Assistant, and followed by 
a notice of a Handbook to the Industrial Department 
of the International Exhibition. 

It was on a work of later date, Ecclesiastical 
Institutions, originally published separately, that the 
Saturday Review expressed itself in a way which may 
fitly be here noted. I do not propose in this case to 
quote the whole criticism, though its brevity invites 
that treatment. It will suffice if I name the fact that 
it was embodied in a review-article entitled " Nine- 
teen Books on Divinity." The date was February 27, 
1886. Though not treating of divinity at all, my 
work, here tied in a bundle with eighteen others 
rightly so classed, set forth, for the first time I be- 
lieve, the natural genesis of organizations for wor- 
ship — a genesis common to them all irrespective of 
the particular cults they subserved. TThile this was 

not thought worthy of separate notice, another book 
21 



314 FACTS AND COMMENTS. 

relating to churches was so thought. On October 2 
of the same year, 1886, there appeared a review- 
article of the usual length on " Church-Bells of Hert- 
fordshire " ! 

To appreciate the point of this contrast, it should 
be remembered that the Saturday Review was estab- 
lished and maintained as an organ of the highest cul- 
ture, officered by writers of great repute and pro- 
posing to furnish trustworthy judgments. 

Of course these selected examples were scattered 
through masses of criticisms of undecided character, 
written by those who severally had in view the 
honorarium to be gained by adequate numbers of 
pages, and who commonly aimed to show that they 
knew much more than the author. How little there 
has been of that guidance to be expected, may be 
inferred from a single fact. Since the issue of the 
Synthetic Philosophy commenced in 1860, there has, 
so far as I know, been only a single review-article in 
which a concise account of its leading ideas was at- 
tempted; and that was in an American provincial 
paper. In no daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly 
periodical in England, has a reviewer sought to ex- 
plain what it is all about. Of one small instalment 
a clear idea was given some twenty years ago; but a 
general idea of the whole, no critic has ever attempted 
to give during the forty years which have now passed. 

I have sometimes discussed with myself the ques- 



APPENDIX. 315 

tion — Is periodical criticism a parasite on literature 
or an aid to literature? Unquestionably it is a para- 
site in so far as it owes to literature its existence — 
derives from it its nutriment. But does it at the 
same time subserve a useful function ? Is the average 
quality of literature improved by it, or does it not 
rather tend to deteriorate the average quality by fur- 
thering the diffusion of inferior books? 

This is a question far too large to be discussed 
here. My conclusion must be limited to that derived 
from personal experience; and this leads me to the 
second alternative. Evidence like that given above, 
joined to evidence received orally, prompts the belief 
that had there been no such institution as that of re- 
viewing, I should have derived considerable advantage 
— partly from the absence of misleading statements, 
but chiefly from the diminution of that ephemeral 
literature brought into being and pushed into notice 
by " bread-scholars " and publishers, and the jour- 
nalists who further their ends for the sake of adver- 
tisements. 

(i) 

THE END. 



